ORIGINAL AND BEST
NO.70AUTUMN 03£1/$2
FREE TO PRISONERS
CHIST
for the destruction of CMMsadon
ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLIGY ISSUL LIGHTS OUT IN NEW YORK. THE PERENNIAL WILD MEN.
BOB BLACK'S APES Of WHAT! HAMMER OF WITCHES.
AUGUST 1,2003, SAN OIEGO:
YOU
NEWS
www.greenanarchist.org
GREEN ANARCHIST N0.70 PAGE 2
DIARY OF
DIRECT ACTION
More info: ALF Supporters Group, BM 1160, London WC1N 3XX;
Arkangel, BCM 9280, London WC1N 3XX; North American ALF
Supporters Group (NAALFSG), PO Box 428, Brighton, Ontario,
Canada KOK 1HO; Earth First! Action Update c/o PO Box 2971,
Brighton, East Sussex BN2 2TT; and Earth First! Journal, PO Box
3023, Tucson, AZ 85702, USA.
FEBRUARY
1 : CAPRALB A, ITALY - ALF free
2,000 mink.
2: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA -
58 trucks damaged by ALF at
lobster wholesalers. $50,000
damage.
6: UPPSALA, SWEDEN - ALF
break windows at chinchilla
farmer's home.
9: VOLKEL, NETHERLANDS -
US military satellite dish
trashed, - 1 1 nuclear missiles
off-line for 24 hours. $500,000
damage.
1 1 : PIEVE DI TECO, ITALY -
Phone mast torched, 'Free
Marco' slogans left.
15: PONTEDURA, ITALY - Two
Benetton shops bricked and slo-
ganised.
17: UPPSALA, SWEDEN - ALF
break more windows at chin-
chilla breeder's home.
19: AMELIA, ITALY - Phone mast
torched. 'ALF', 'Free Marco'
slogans left.
19: ROME, ITALY - Attempted
phone mast torching - 'Free
Marco, Free Everyone' slogans
left.
DUBLIN, EIRE - US Navy war-
plane trashed at Shannon airport.
Five areests.
MARCH
5: LECCE, ITALY- Benerron
shop damaged.
7: TRENTO, ITALY - Four Esso
garages sabbed.
9: HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CALI-
FORNIA, USA - Thousands of
surveyors flags removed by
Forest Defenders to prevent log-
ging.
13: TURIN, ITALY - Duck freed
from ornamental pond built for
Olympic complex.
18: SIDNEY, AUSTRALIA - Huge
'No War' slogan painted on roof
of Opera House.
20: BRISTOL, AVON - Two cop
cars trashed and Labour offices
sloganised: 'No War',
'Murderers'.
20: ROME, ITALY - 8 Esso garages
torched.
21: BROADMEAD, BRISTOL,
AVON - McDonalds bricked.
21: SUPERIOR TOWNSHIP,
MICHIGAN, USA - ELF trash
urban sprawl under construction:
$400,000 damase.
22: MILAN, ITALY - Mollies
thrown at McDonalds and Israeli
tourist agency during peace
demo.
22: TRIESTE, ITALY - 5 Esso
garages sabbed.
23: LOS ANGELES, CALIFOR-
NIA, USA - Fur and Andrews-
related windows catapulted.
23: TURIN, ITALY - Two uni
departments using Morini (HLS
subsiduary breeder) animals
daubed and sloganised. Peace
flag substituted for 'No Peace
for Killers' banner.
24: BRISTOL, AVON - Starbucks
trashed. 'Stop the War' slogan.
24: AVIANO, ITALY - US military
car torched.
27: DANTIAGO, CHILE -
Cashpoint machine blown up at
US-owned BankBoston.
27: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA,
USA - Car and home of HLS
SAN DIEGO C0ND0S BURNT
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has
accepted responsibility for a $50 mil-
lion fire in San Diego, California, that
destroyed an unfinished five-story
condominium complex on August 1.
No one was hurt in the blaze, which
was credited to the ELF through a
painted slogan: "If you build it, we
will burn it. E.L.F."
The Golden Triangle area, where the
complex was located, is adjacent to
Rose Canyon — home to bobcats,
coyotes, ash-throated flycatchers,
red- shouldered hawks, barn owls
and orioles, as well as at least two
rare and threatened plants.
From 2,000 years ago until the last
century, the Kumeyaay people inhab-
ited a seasonal village in Rose
Canyon, gathering acorns from the
once abundant coastal live oaks,
weaving baskets from the arroyo wil-
low and hunting not far from where a
seven-million-dollar crane was
destroyed by the ELF fire.
This particular project, La Jolla
Crossroads, when completed would
comprise 1,800 apartments with an
average monthly rent of $1,340. The
42-acre Nobel Research Center,
which will house the biotechnology
company IDEC Corporation, is
planned to be built adjacent to the
site. Following the fire, a small, hand-
printed sign was taped to a traffic bar-
rier near the construction site:
"Thank-You E.L.F. Burn Baby
Burn." Tad Simmons of Carlsbad
said that as an environmentalist he
had mixed feelings about the fire.
"Part of me thinks it's kind of cool
that somebody had the guts to stand
for something like this-a cause, and
that nobody ever gets hurt."
No arrests have been made, but the
FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force said
several suspects were being tracked.
On August 14, FBI agents raided the
home of animal rights activists
affiliated with the San Diego-based
Compassion for Farm Animals
(CFA). CFA organized a lecture with
Rod Coronado on the day of the ELF
fire. Agents seized phone lists, a com-
puter, a video camera and videotape
of the lecture, which was part of on-
going Revolution Summer events in
San Diego.
Since the fire, CFA activists have
been under constant surveillance and
have had their home mysteriously
broken into and vehicle stolen.
Thanks to the Earth First Journal
www. earthfirstj ournal . org
representative daubed with red
paint by ALF.
27: VICENZA, ITALY - More US
Army personnel cars torched.
27: ROME, ITALY - 12 cards at
Ford dealership torched. Like
attempt at Jaguar dealers. Anti-
war protest.
29: MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA,
USA - ELF torch US Nany truck
and sloganise five more: 'Stop
the War', 'Leave Iraq'.
30: MILAN, ITALY - Esso garages
sabbed.
30: PIETRASANTA, ITALY - Six
city council cars torched in anti-
incinerator action.
30: BOLOGNA, ITALY - Bomb
found I front of IBM offices.
31 WELLINGTON, NEW
ZEALAND - ALF brick two
McDonalds, three butchers and
another burger outlet.
APRIL
1: CAGLIARI, ITALY - Esso
garage torched.
2: ALFEN / BORCHEN, GER-
MANY - 24 dogs freed from
vivisection breeder.
3: BRISTOL, AVON - BP petrol
station trashed. 'No War', 'No
Blood for Oil' slogans.
4: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA -
ALF torch tiger meat store.
$100,000 damage.
4: TARRANO, ITALY - 11 tourist
chalets torched.
8: SANTA CRIZ, CALIFORNIA,
USA - ELF sloganise 65 SUVs
and trucks: 'No War', 'SUVs
Suck', 'No Blood for Oil'.
10: ESSUNGA, SWEDEN - ALF
free 8,000 mink from fur farm.
10: LIVORNO, ITALY - Forest
Service manager's house dyna-
mited.
10: LIVORNO, ITALY - Phone
mast torched.
10: SASSARI, SARDINIA - Two
Natural Reserve boats torched in
access dispute.
11: FORLI, ITALY - Two fur shops,
Benetton and Blockbusters
paintbombed.
16: TURIN, ITALY - Sumitomo
(HLS customer) glued and slo-
ganised.
18: DUBLIN, EIRE - Peace protes-
tors plant potatoes on Shannon
airport runway.
19: ORISTANO, ITALY -
McDonalds bomb-damaged.
25: PIETRASANTA, ITALY -
Three Benetton shops trashed.
27: TURIN, ITALY - University
customer of Morini (HLS cus-
tomer) glued.
MAY ""
3: LIVORNO, ITALY - Benetton
bricked. 'Solidarity with
Mapuche people' slogan.
9: ALBANY, NEW YORK, USA -
Office trailer of asphalt company
torched.
9: PISA, ITALY - phone mast
torched.
18: MODENA, ITALY - Forty quail
liberated by ALF, two hunt ken-
nels trashed.
22: PISA, ITALY - Two Sisley
(Benetton subsiduary) shops
bricked.
30: VENICE, ITALY - Satirical
masked individuals shove shit in
psychiatrist's face.
30: CASALMORANO, ITALY -
Fires set amongst trucks and
machinery at Sygenta site. 'No
GMOs, No Sygenta, No
Pesticides, Sab Biotech' slogan
left.
GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA,
USA - Thirty SUVs at dealership
trashed with etching fluid.
ELF PUTS SUV'S OFF
ROAD FOR GOOO
On August 22, the Earth Liberation
Front (ELF) simultaneously carried
out acts of property destruction at
several auto dealerships in
California.
Clippinger Chevrolet of West
Covina, California, sustained more
than one million dollars in damages
after 20 SUVs-mostly H2 Hummers-
were set on fire. Twenty additional
vehicles were damaged by the fire,
and a warehouse on the site was
destroyed.
In Duarte, California, SUVs from
Advantage Ford were spray-painted
with messages such as "ELF,"
"Gross Polluter" and "We (Heart)
Pollution." Across the street, thirty
cars at Duarte Mitsubishi were also
hit with graffiti that condemned SUV
ownership.
At Rusnak Mercedes Benz in
Arcadia, California, 10 luxury SUVs
were spray-painted with the words
"terrorist," "killer" and "ELF."
Rusnak estimated losses of up to
$300,000.
According to the ELF Press Office,
"ELF actions are a reminder to SUV
owners of how their personal choices
affect the society and environment in
which they live."
JUNE
3: CHICO, CALIFORNIA, USA -
ELF opposing sprawl try torch-
ing luxury home: "Civilization
as a whole has provenm detri-
mental to human and non-human
animals. We won't settle for
anything less than complete col-
lapse."
4: DETROIT, MICHIGAN, USA -
ELF torch two homes under con-
struction. $700,000 damage.
7: TREVISO, ITALY - 24 cashpoint
machines for biotech-funding
back sabbed.
7: LECCO, ITALY - Two Esso
garages damaged.
14: SASSARI, ITALY - Phone mast
bombed.
14: DORGAZI, ITALY - Phone
mast torched.
18: ROME, ITALY - Transport
company supporting Morini
(HLS subsiduary breeder) super-
glued and sloganised.
19: ROME, ITALY - Two Morini-
connected vivisectors' homes
sloganised.
20: CAGUARI, ITALY - Shop
owned by beach-polluting local
politician torched.
23: EDMOND, OKLAHOMA,
USA - ALF trash HLS
unvestor's home.
26: NUORO, ITALY - Tourist struc-
ture bombed before opening.
WINSHILL, BURTON,
STAFFORDSHIRE - Halls (viv
breeders) employee's car paint-
strippered by ALF.
JULY
12: PISA /FLORENCE/
LIVORNO, ITALY - ARPAT
(Tuscany regional agency)
offices sent bullets and Green
Core communique: "In these
years you destroyed our land,
now it's enough. Your peace is
finished"
12: SARDGNA, SARDINIA -
Proletarian Cores for
Communism send bullet to
senoir military officer to oppose
waste dump construction.
13: SURREY - Three HSS Hire
shops (HLS-related) glued by
ALF. Cancelled HLS contract.
13: PUCKAPUNYAL, VICTORIA,
AUSTRALIA - Australian ALF
destroy electrified fencing trap-
ping thousands of kangaroos the
night before a military cull.
20: AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA - ALF
trash home of HLS lobbyist in
solidarity with Lindsey Parme.
'Abbott Kills' and 'ALF' slo-
gans.
HAMPSHIRE - thousands of
pheasants freed from fattening
pens and sheds.
WINSHILL, BURTON,
STAFFORDSHIRE: Halls (vivi-
section breeders) employee
trapped in home by house- wrap-
ping chains.
AUCUST
1: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA -
ELF torch condo complex, $50
million damage.
10: REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY -
Morini (HLS subsiduary breed-
er) farm owner's car dramatical-
ly destroyed.
12: SONOMA, CALIFORNIA,
USA - Foie gras resturant
trashed.
15: PARMA, ITALY - Pioneer Hi-
Brred production plant torcned,
stopping production in peak-har-
vest. 'Pioneer pollutes seeds.
Fire to GMOs' slogan left.
SEPTEMBER ~
27: KATHIMERINI, GREECE -
Unidentified assailants threw
molotov cocktail bombs at a
National Bank branch in
Thessaloniki at around 3 a.m.
before launching another two at
a nearby branch of McDonald's.
Minor damage to bank's ATM
and a fire in the McDonald's
branch.
PAGE 3 GREEN ANARCHIST No.70
www.greenanarchist.org
NEWS
PRISONERS OF WAR
These revolutionaries have been jailed for their beliefs so you can write
them letters of support (nothing compromising!). Those not listed should-
n't take it as a sleight they've been excluded - just send us your details
and we'll put you on our free mailing list! Prisoner details change rapidly
and may be out of date by the time you read GA.
More information from: Earth Liberation Front Prisoners Newsletter, BM
Box 2407, London WC1N 3XX and North American ELP, POB 11331,
Eugene, OR 97440, USA. ELP-Poland PO Box 43, 15-662 Bialystok 26,
Poland.
On the web, see www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk
ECO DEFENCE PRISONERS
Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, Ul.
Kalvarijskaya 36, PO Box 35K,
Minsk 220600, Belarus.
Serving 8 years for telling the world
that the nuclear radiation around
Chernobyl is worse than the Belarus
Government has admitted.
Jose Bove, N° d'ecrou 22377 Y, Bloc
A 07, 34753 Villeneuve-les-
Maguelone, France.
Serving 10-months for trashing GM
crops.
Jen Bradley, (CS# 057 454 68),
Burnaby Correctional Centre for
Women, 7900 Fraser Park Drive,
Burnaby, BC V5J 5H1, Canada.
On remand for forest defence activi-
ty.
Marco Camenisch, Hornlistrasse
55,8330 Pfaffikon/ZH Switzerland
Serving 10-years for anti-nuclear
eco-bombings. In 2002 he completed
a 12-year sentence in Italy for similar
actions. Charges relating to his
escape from prison in the 80s are also
expected. Marco reads French,
German, Spanish & Italian.
Ted Kaczynski (04475-046), US Pen
- admin Max Facility, PO Box 8500,
Florence Colorado 81226, USA.
Is serving multiple life sentences for
the infamous 'Unabomber' anti-tech-
nology bombing campaign.
Inaki Garcia Koch, Carcel de
Pamplona, C/San Roque. Apdo. 250,
31080 - Irunez - Pamplona, Navarra
(Espana), Spain.
Serving just under 5 years for sabo-
taging a dam construction site.
Betty Krawczyk, (CS# 037 939 24),
Burnaby Correctional Centre for
Women, 7900 Fraser Park Drive,
Burnaby, BC V5J 5H1, Canada.
On Remand for forest defence.
Jeffrey Luers, #13797671, OSP ,
2605 State St. Salem, OR 97310,
USA.
Serving 22 years & 8 months for
arson on a car dealership & attempted
arson of an oil truck.
Craig Marshall, #13797662, SRCI,
777 Stanton Blvd, Ontario, OR 97914
USA.
Serving 5 years 5 months for conspir-
acy to commit arson and possession
of incendiary devices, having used
the devices to destroy SUV's to raise
attention to the environmentally
destructive nature of these vehicles.
Fran Thompson, 1090915,
Chillicothe Correctional Center, 1500
W. Third St, Chillicothe, MO 64601,
USA.
An eco-activist serving Life for
killing, in self-defence, a stalker who
had broken into her home.
Helen Woodson, 03231-045 FMC
Carswell, POB 27137, Fort Worth,
TX 76127, USA.
Serving 27 years for:
1) Robbing a federal bank of $26,000
and burning the money whilst distrib-
uting a statement denouncing materi-
alism, wealth and power that caused
environmental destruction.
2) Mailing .38 calibre bullets with
warning letters to various
Government & corporate officials
stating that their actions were like
bullets fired into the heart of creation.
3) Using a jackhammer, she carried
out a Ploughshares direct disarma-
ment against a Mintueman II missile
silo.
Raul Zapatos, Dorm 6-C, Maximum
security compound, Bureau of cor-
rections, Muntinlupa City, Metro
Manila, Philippines.
Serving Life for shooting dead, in
self-defence, armed men connected
with illegal logging after they tried to
attack him.
ANIMAL LIBERATION ~
Dave Blenkinsop EM7899, HMP
Bullingdon, Oxfordshire OX6 0PZ
England.
Serving 10 years.
1) Three years for a stave attack on
the Managing Director of HLS.
2) 18 months for rescuing 600 guinea
pigs from a lab supplier.
3) 5? years for planting incendiary
devices under abattoir vehicles.
Benjamin Persky, DIN: 03R3916,
Lakeview Shock Incarceration Corr.
Fac, PO Box T, Brocton, New York
14716-0679 USA.
SHAC activist serving 2-6 years for
"Criminal Mischief.
ANTI-CAPITALIST
Kratoumeno SIMON CHAPMAN,
Dikastikes Fylakes Diavaton, T.K.
540 12, Thessaloniki, Greece
(On Remand)
Robert Thaxton #12112716, OSP,
2605 State St, Salem, OR 97310,
USA
(86months)
PEACE & ANTIWAR
Carol Gilbert, PO Box 518,
Georgetown, CO80444, USA.
Jailed for 2 years 9 months for anti-
nuke action.
Tony Haughian, JM9774, HMP
Pentonville, Caledonian Rd, London
N7 8TT,England.
On remand for alleged anti-war activ-
ities.
Jackie Hudson, PO Box 518,
Georgetown, CO80444, USA.
Jailed for 2? years for anti-nuke
action.
Ardeth Platte, PO Box 518,
Georgetown, CO80444, USA.
Jailed for 3 years and 5 months for
anti-nuke action.
Ulla Roder, HMP Corton Vale,
Stirling, FK9 5NY, Scotland.
Jailed for disarming a Tornado war
plane.
INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE ~
Leonard Peltier #89637-132, PO
Box 1000, Leavenworth, KS 66048,
USA.
Serving Life after being framed for
murdering 2 FBI agents.
Eric Wildcat Hall, #BL-5355, Unit
I/A 10745 Route 18, Albion, PA
16475-0002, USA.
Serving 35-75 years for helping ship
arms to Central American indigenous
activists.
MOTE ""
Debbie Simms Africa (006307),
Janet Holloway Africa (006308) and
Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at:
SCI Cambridge Springs, 451
Fullerton Ave, Cambridge Springs,
PA 16403-1238, USA.
Michael Davis Africa (AM4973)
and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975)
both at SCI Grateford, PO Box 244,
Grateford, PA 19426-0244, USA.
Edward Goodman Africa
(AM4974), 301 Morea Rd,
Frackville, PA 17932, USA.
William Philips Africa (AM4984)
and Delbert Orr Africa (AM4985)
both at SCI Dallas Drawer K, Dallas,
PA 18612, USA.
Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI
Greene, 175 Progress Drive,
Waynesburg PA 15370, USA.
In 1981 Mumia, was framed for the
murder of a cop. Awaiting re- sentenc-
ing.
ANTI-FASCIST ""
Matthew Lamont T90251, A-5-248
UP, Centinella State Prison, PO Box
901, Imperial, CA 92251. USA.
Serving 3 years for possessing an
incendiary device, allegedly intended
to be used to disrupt a neo-nazi gath-
ering.
Tomasz Wiloszewski, Zaklad Karny,
Orzechowa 5, 98-200 Sieradz,
Poland.
Serving 15 years for accidentally
killing a neo-nazi whilst defending
himself.
SPANISH ANARCHIST PRISONERS
The latest news we have from our
Barcelona comrades imprisoned in
September say that they're all under
FIES-3 Classification (FIES:Special
Prisoners Survey File), which is
applied to members of armed band or
group.
They were arrested on the morning of
September 16th, being held without
bail for a trial that could take years.
They're being accused of sending a
book-bomb, urban terrorism, plan-
ning 2 assassinations, illegal posses-
sion of firearms, arson attacks,
belonging to a terrorist group, etc.
Communications with the outer
world are reduced to two letters in
and two outside of prison every
month. Their families say they are
still healthy.
We still have no news about the other
ones being driven to other prisons, or
if they're still held at Soto del Real
Prison, where Roger and Igor were
sharing a cell. We also don't know
nothing about Joaquin, which isola-
tion was kept even after declaring in
Audiencia Nacional and who wasn't
allowed to be assisted by the lawyer
who travelled there from Barcelona.
We have no clue if he was carried to
the same prison or to another one,
and also don't know about his health.
the two whose location is known:
Rafael Tomas y Gaspar, C.P.
Madrid - 3. Ctra Pinto a San Martin
de la Vega, Km 5, 28340 Valdemoro -
Madrid
Carolina Forne Roig, C.P. DE
AVILA, Ctra. Vicolozano-Brieva,
s/n. 05194 Brieva (Avila)
Protests at Spanish embassy or other
actions appreciated. Bail and legal
fees needed. International bank
account open.To make a donation
you will need the following codes:
IBAN: ES58 0182 7028 2102 0153
0482
BIC: BBVAESMMXXX
This is an ongoing process against
anarchist movement in Spain which
started almost a year ago.with the
arrest of 4 people in Valencia, and
four more 10 months later.
MARCO SOLIDARITY RAIDS
On 24. Sept, Italian police from the
Carabinieri Special Operation Branch
(ROS) conducted fifty house raids
against suspected eco-activists. The
ROS is investigating an alleged con-
spiracy to create economic sabotage
against environmentally destructive
creations like skiing resorts, incinera-
tors, mobile phone masts and televi-
sion towers.
This alleged conspiracy is meant to
be led by Marco Camenisch, who is
currently imprisoned for eco-bomb-
ings against the Swiss nuclear power
industry. Marco's cell in Pfaffikon
prison was also raided.
This is not the first time that Italian
police have tried to link Marco with
alleged conspiracies in a blatant
attempt to try and break his spirit and
destroy the solidarity Marco gets
from his friends and supporters alike.
Between thirteen & twenty activists
are under investigation for this
alleged conspiracy. All those who
were raided are eco-activists/eco-
anarchists who have actively support-
ed Marco either by taking part in
demonstrations outside Swiss
Embassies or by creating websites
and other information about Marco.
This investigation appears to be con-
centrating on a series of direct actions
which occurred in solidarity with
Marco when he was on hunger strike
earlier this year. The actions being
investigated include an arson attack
on 18. January, against a nearly built
chairlift at a ski resort which resulted
in six million euros worth of dam-
ages. A spray painted slogan at the
scene of the arson read "Free Marco -
Fire to destructors". The same slogan
was found the same night near a
phone mast torched and a television
tower bombed elsewhere. More
actions followed against phone
masts, all claimed in solidarity with
Marco.
ELF PRESS OFFICE STATEMENT ON
JOSH CONNOLE'S ARREST & RELEASE
On September 12th Josh Connole, a
known environmentalist and peace
activist, was arrested by the FBI. Josh
was accused by the FBI of involve-
ment with the ELF-claimed fire and
vandalism of SUV dealerships in
West Covina, California on August
22nd, which resulted in over a mil-
lion dollars in damages.
On September 15th, Connole was
released without charges due to a
lack of evidence to make the case
against him. It is obvious that the FBI
seriously blundered in this case, rush-
ing to make an arrest in the middle of
the night based on no physical evi-
dence at all.
Even during the lead-up to josh's
release, no concrete evidence was put
forward by the FBI to suggest that
Josh Connole was in any way
involved with the West Covina
Hummer dealership action. They
apparently based the raid on a like-
ness comparison from blurry securi-
ty-video footage and nothing else.
While there no physical evidence to
suggest that Josh was at the site, there
*is* plenty of evidence that Josh was
assisting a friend moving into their
house on the night the Hummer
action took place, and wasn't any-
where near West Covina.
The arrest is part of a pattern of
harassment the FBI has been visiting
on activists in Southern California
since mid-August in a desperate
attempt to claim "success" in their
hunt for ELF members. Since 1997,
very few ELF activists have been
arrested which has led to a growing
frustration in the FBI as evidenced by
the recent raids against activists in
the San Diego area and now this
arrest on what appears to be non-
existent grounds.
The Earth Liberation Front Press
Office would like to send a message
of solidarity and support to those
activists undergoing harassment by
the FBI in Southern California and
elsewhere. We encourage people who
wish to support Earth Liberation pris-
oners to contribute to the Earth
Liberation Prisoners Support
Network.
NEWS
www.greenanarchist.org
GREEN ANARCHIST N0.70 PAGE 4
COMBAT DISPATCH 106: VOLUNTEERS
Going To War with Brian McCarvill
PARTI
I chose the term "Volunteers" because it is apropos to COMBAT.
"Comrade" or "comrades" is another term that I like to use a lot in
conjunction with COMBAT. I feel as though the two terms are gen-
uinely applicable to Anarchists. I am an Anarchist. As an Anarchist I
try to frame my thoughts, my mode of Life, my spirit, in terms of
Anarchism. My Anarchism. My Anarchism is what I believe it to be,
not what I am told it should be. Still, my Anarchism is fluid. I con-
stantly thirst for, and seek out, Anarchist literature and comraderie,
from anywhere and everywhere that I can. As a prisoner in the Oregon
gulag, all contact with outside Anarchists was gradually being choked
off. More on that in a moment. Let me close this opening paragraph by
stating that "Volunteers" and "COMBAT" extend beyond the confines
of Anarchism. "Volunteers" and "COMBAT" encompass the struggle
to move the revolution forward. Given this very simple request, both
"Volunteers" and "COMBAT" will tolerate and seek extra- Anarchist
support.
prison litigator and prison legal assis-
tant. I knew that the courts were not
friendly to prisoner litigation.
Coupled with the bad press that
Anarchists were getting in Oregon it
seemed hopeless. Still, nothing ven-
tured, nothing gained. We were
already in a position of total repres-
sion. We could only improve our sit-
uation. However, a loss in court
would only seal our fate in the form
of our current dilemma. I filed suit,
McCarvill v. DeHaan et al., United
States District Court, District of
Oregon, case no. 02-1167-KI,
Portland, Oregon.
Back to the situation within the
Oregon prison system.
In 2000 the Oregon Department of
Corrections (ODOC) "documented" 1
Anarchists as a security threat group
(STG). 2 At first, this STG designation
by ODOC definition earned
Anarchists designation as a gang.
Prior to this secretive documenting,
interaction between myself and out-
side Anarchists was relatively free
and open. Rejection of Anarchist
publications was rare. As far as I
know, no Anarchist publication has
ever caused an actual security prob-
lem within an ODOC prison facility
that I had the pleasure of being
interned in. 3 Once the documentation
occurred, almost all Anarchist litera-
ture was intercepted and rejected by
ODOC. The reasoning tendered for
almost all of the rejections was the
display of the circle-A or Anarchist
Black Cross symbol. It is the rare
Anarchist publication that does not
contain either a circle-A symbol or an
ABC symbol. ODOC was aware of
this and they wrote a provision into
their mail rule which declared the cir-
cle-A, the ABC cross, and the black
flag depictions within Anarchist pub-
lications to be "gang / STG parapher-
nalia". They followed up this declara-
tion with a policy of "zero tolerance
for any gang / STG-related activity".
My interaction with outside
Anarchists essentially ceased to exist.
I was pissed.
I was not the only one pissed off.
Other Anarchist prisoners, comrades
of mine and yours, were equally
pissed off. We all attempted to chal-
lenge the rejection problem by utilis-
ing ODOC's administrative review
process. While I was at EOCI
(Eastern Oregon Correctional
Institution), every once-in-a-while
one of these administrative reviews
would terminate in my favour. This
did not last long before I was trans-
ferred to OSP (Oregon State
Penitentiary). At OSP, not one single
administrative review for any anar-
chist prisoner that I knew of terminat-
ed in the Anarchists' favour. 4
We were in a quandary as to what to
do about this problem. It became
obvious to me that only a court
injunction was going to get us any
relief. I was loathe to file such an
action. Tried pleading our case with
all of the ODOC brass who's sphere
of influence touched upon the mail
rule, or whom could influence the
mail rule. It was totally fruitless. It
appeared that the lawsuit avenue was
to be our only chance of relief. It was
a big chance. I was an experienced
The combat had begun. I do not want
to bore you with the ins-and-outs of
litigating the suit. Anyone truly inter-
ested in this aspect of the combat can
access the court file and gain a pretty
good idea of the massive effort
required to prosecute such a suit from
the perspective of a prisoner. 5 It was
formidable, I can tell you.
We won the suit. Notice that I said
"we". I could not have accomplished
this win alone. This is the point that I
wish to make. Had I been alone in
this effort I would have lost.
There was all manner of support in
this combat. This is Anarchism at
work. This is revolution at work. In
the matter at hand this was victory. Of
course, not all Anarchists, particular-
ly those who pose themselves as eth-
ically pure Anarchists, or principled
Anarchists, chose to participate. This
is certainly OK. I support them in
their principalities. They are often
keepers of the flame, the ones that can
be relied upon to perpetuate both the-
ory and history, to pacify with knowl-
edge and truth, noble, pertinent, and
necessary tasks to be sure. But, be
that as it may, there is a war in
progress, the litigation that I started
was a battle in that war, militarily
speaking, an engagement.
Once started, the litigation was, in
fact, approached as a battle. It was all
or nothing. This was no skirmish. As
in any battle, militarily speaking, to
win against a formidable enemy, a
firmly entrenched enemy, an enemy
with superior firepower that holds the
high ground, the tactics would neces-
sitate creating multiple fronts and
out- flanking the enemy on all of those
fronts. This required more than me as
the litigator, much more.
My cellmate at the time, and com-
rade, Rob los Ricos, came up with a
plan to mobilise outside forces. A
second front was born. Rob, with
myself in full agreement, organised a
campaign wherein outside supporters
were requested to protest ODOC's
repression by sending both of us post-
cards with a large circle-A symbol
displayed over the words "This is not
a gang symbol". Hundreds of post-
cards flowed in. ODOC reacted by
throwing both of us in the hole for
120 days, convicting us of "unautho-
rised organisation l". 6
The hole time turned out to be a
blessing in disguise as far as litigating
the lawsuit was concerned.
Approximately 90% of the written
discovery efforts were conducted by
me from the hole. Yes, I had to hand
print it all on unlined paper with a
miniature pen the size of a run-of-the-
mill birthday cake candle, but I had
plenty of time to accomplish it all.
Had I been in general population, I
would not have had the opportunity
to perfect the tremendous amount of
written discovery. This proved to be a
key downfall in the enemy's defences
on the central front.
As I hammered at the enemy with the
full frontal attack of the litigation, the
outside support network kicked into
full mobility. The Anarchist Prisoners
Legal Aid Network, with us from the
beginning, both raising and supplying
monies that supported the litigation,
went on line and otherwise organised
massive publicity for the battle.
APLAN also coordinated the contin-
ued postcard campaign, as well as an
effort to arrange declarations in sup-
port of the litigation from interested
Anarchists from all over the world. 7
Break the Chains and Green Anarchy
of Eugene, Oregon, mirrored
APLAN's efforts, providing a posi-
tion statement and kicking the bushes
for declarations. John Connor and
Green Anarchist of London, England,
provided an in-depth position state-
ment. Joanne Rankin and comrades
of Dublin, Ireland, held a fundraising
event and provided much appreciated
moral support — thank you, Joanne.
Ryan Foote and Mishap zine of
Eugene, Oregon, provided an in-
depth position statement and support
that considerably freed-up ODOC
restriction on zines. John Zerzan pro-
vided much-needed declarations that
substantially took the legal substance
away from ODOC's position.
Countless others from everywhere
contributed declarations, postcards
and, probably most important to me,
moral support.
It turns out that, had I approached the
litigation on my own, the cause
would have failed. Had ODOC been
approached without the litigation, the
cause would have failed. Because we
approached the battle multilaterally,
with full force and conviction, we
won. Anarchist comraderie was the
binding influence. In this age of
information we are a power to be
reckoned with. The isolation that
accompanied Anarchist individual-
ism in the past is no longer a detri-
ment. Organisation, as a verb, not an
entity, as in this instance, is a proven
battle winner.
Winning the war is next. It involves
COMBAT Fuck Uncle Sam, the rev-
olution needs you.
PART II
Combat begets casualties. War is hell.
How true. Revolution is not a dinner
party, after all. 8 Casualties were suf-
fered by us all around. Impact, both
immediate and long-term, varied by
degrees as to the participants. I am
reminded of a conversation that I had
with two of the defendants from the
lawsuit, Greg Atkin, the OSP safety
officer, and Jacy Duran, the then-cen-
tral mail administrator. 9 Prior to my
actual filing of the suit I had told
Duran and Atkin (to his credit, Atkin
had brought Duran to my cell door in
an effort to solve the circle-A prob-
lem) that the only avenue of relief
that I had left was to actually file suit.
I asked them both if there would be
any hard feelings in the event that I
did file suit and of course they both
professed that there would not be any
"paybacks".
I am currently sitting in ODOC's
showcase isolation unit prison, Two
Rivers Correctional Institution
(TRCI). How and why did I arrive
here? If you have had enough where-
withal to read this far, you obviously
are able to rationalise the answer. I
am getting ahead of myself here
somewhat. Let me back up.
The first casualties in the battle were
absorbed by you, our supporters, and
us prison rank and file, in the form of
monetary cost. Court filing fees were
$150.00. Legal copies and postage
expenses quickly took off exponen-
tially, costing multiple hundreds of
dollars all total. You raised these
funds for us. Your actions and support
in doing so constituted a state
defence. Although the state com-
plains of costs, there is no impact
upon its individuals, it simply
squeezes its taxpayers a little harder.
The costs to you and I are intended to
deter. Capital at work controlling us.
For me this has never been an obsta-
cle. For you, well, I must say, thank-
fully, that those of you who were not
deterred, occurred, and hopefully will
continue to occur, in adequate num-
bers to move the revolution forward.
To those of you who were deterred by
either financial cost, time incurred, or
simply by the necessary effort, I
implore you to get the fuck out of the
way, take your social-climbing non-
committal arse elsewhere — there is
no place in the revolution for you.
I recognise that outside support for us
prisoners, whether it be monetary,
physical effort and/or moral support,
takes away from other valuable life
experience. I think I speak for more
than myself when I say that we pris-
oners deeply respect and appreciate
your efforts.
Economic impositions upon us, the
prisoners involved (Rob los Ricos
and I here) are, of course, amplified
very quickly as we deal with very
small amounts of money in our lives.
We were immediately impacted when
we lost our jobs and were thrown in
the hole for the postcard campaign.
As long-term prisoners, it was rather
easy to take this in stride, particularly
because of the outside support that
we receive. Still, the state imposes
the penalty as a deterrent, it's all that
it knows. Personally, I lost 100 or so
days of good-time as well as my
prison job. In the long run, the loss of
income will become a considerable
hardship factor in my quality of life
and my ability to interact with the
outside. The hole time (120 days) and
the loss of good-time are somewhat
inconsequential deterrents.
The greatest casualty suffered by me
is my transfer to TRCI. The state
knows this, it is why they did it.
There was a clamour from the outside
and from me to ODOC high-rankers
to restore Rob and I as cellies and to
our jobs. Even the attorney general's
office recommended return of the
jobs and no transfers. But authority
must have its pound of flesh, gained
in this case through the mental
anguish inflicted upon me through the
transfer to TRCI. Not only did they
knowingly separate Rob and I, the
worst thing the could do to me, they
transferred me to the only prison in
Oregon that has no means of ever sit-
ting with back support. They did this
with the full knowledge that I suffer
from severe spinal trauma and
wedged discs. So they know they are
torturing me mentally and physically.
Still, separating Rob and I was and is
a tremendous blow to my good men-
tal health. We pose absolutely no
threat to ODOC of any kind. Filing of
the lawsuit, your support, the engage-
ment, was an affront to ODOC secu-
rity's fascist ego, nothing more, noth-
ing less. They simply cannot stomach
that they were wrong, both morally
and legally. Authority, like a trod-
upon viper must bite and bite it has.
CONCLUSION
I am currently in physical and mental
agony as I write this piece. Perhaps
by the time it is read conditions will
have improved. I know that comrades
at APLAN have put out a call for a
write-in campaign to ODOC officials
on my behalf. Asking that I be
returned to OSP and be given ade-
quate medical treatment via indy-
media on the Net. Regardless, I'm a
casualty of war, of COMBAT, a will-
ing casualty. We must not be daunted
by authority, by capital, or by combat.
It has been said that history is written
by the winner. My friends, we should
have and maintain every intent to
write that history.
NOTES
1. This is ODOC's terminology. Webster
describes a document as: "A paper that fur-
nishes information, proof, or support of
something else".
2. This according to a sworn statement by
Benny Ward, ODOC's STG manager.
3. Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution at
Pendleton, Oregon, and the Oregon State
Penitentiary at Salem, Oregon. My interac-
tion with outside Anarchists earned me my
transfer from EOCI to OSP for "administra-
tive security concerns".
4. At least not until the date this dispatch was
written.
5. The court file will show you documentation
actually filed. It will not show you the
tremendous amount of written discovery that
took place in the form of Requests for
Production and Requests for Admissions
submitted to each of the ten separate defen-
dants. This was a brutal, voluminous task,
but proved to be exceptionally effective. The
court file should be accessible online for
anyone wishing to view the documents filed.
6. Of course we first had a fair trial!
7. Declarations are sworn statements on par
with affidavits. Federal courts allow declara-
tions. Declarations do not require the declar-
ant to swear before a notary public. The
court accepts the declarant's statement as
true as a matter of independent honour.
8. Please forgive my quoting of Mao but many
of his observations are fairly astute on
removal from the ideology.
9. Duran proved to be extremely vindictive.
She rose to her position of ODOC authority
via a stint as a line officer and an Internal
Affairs officer. Since the prosecution of this
action, she has been supplanted as head
Central Mail Administrator by Randy Geer.
Duran' s vindictiveness was instrumental in
the backlash against this author.
PAGE 5 GREEN ANARCHIST No.70
www.greenanarchist.org
ARTICLES
NEW YORK. NEW YORK
That's the way to do it: John Zerzan on when the lights last went out.
"Amid All the Camaraderie is Much Looting this Time."
Seeing the City Disappear, Wall Street Journal headline, 15 July 1977
The Journal went on to quote a cop on what he saw, as the great
Bastille Day break-out unfolded: "People are going wild in the bor-
ough of Brooklyn. They are looting stores by the carload." Another cop
added later: "Stores were ripped open. Others have been leveled. After
they looted, they burned."
At about 9:00 p.m. on July 13 the
power went out in New York for 24
hours. During that period the com-
plete impotence if the state in our
most 'advanced' urban space could
hardly have been made more trans-
parent.
As soon as the lights went out, cheers
and shouts and loud music announced
the liberation of huge sections of the
city. The looting and burning com-
menced immediately, with whole
families joining in the "carnival spir-
it". In the University Heights section
of the Bronx, a Pontiac dealer lost the
50 new cars in his showroom. In
many areas, tow trucks and other
vehicles were used to tear away the
metal gates from stores. Many multi-
storey furniture businesses were com-
pletely emptied by neighborhood res-
idents.
Despite emergency alerts for the
state troopers, FBI and National
Guard, there was really nothing
authority could do, and they knew it.
A New York Times editorial of July
16 somewhat angrily waved aside
the protests of those who wondered
why there was almost no interven-
tion on the side of property. 'Are
you kidding?" the Times snorted,
pointing out that such provocation
would only have meant that the
entire city would still be engulfed in
riots, adding that the National Guard
is a "bunch of kids" who wouldn't
have had a chance.
The plundering was completely
multi-racial, with white, black and
Hispanic businesses cleaned out and
destroyed throughout major parts of
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and
the Bronx. Not a single "racial inci-
dent" was reported during the upris-
ing, while newspaper pictures and TV
news bore witness to the variously-
coloured faces emerging from the
merchants' windows and celebrating
in the streets.
Similarly, looting, vandalism, and
attacks in police were not confined to
the City proper; Mount Vernon,
Yonkers and White Plains were
among suburbs in which the same
things happened, albeit on a smaller
scale.
Rioting broke out in the Bronx House
of Detention where prisoners started
fires, seized dormitories, and almost
escaped by ramming through a wall
with a steel bed. Concerning the pub-
lic, the Bronx District Attorney
fumed, "It's lawlessness. It's almost
anarchy."
Officer Gary Parlefsky, of the 30th
Precinct in Harlem, said that he and
other cops came under fire from guns,
bottles and rocks. He continued:
We were scared to death.... but
worse than that, a blue uniform
didn't mean a thing. They could-
n't understand why we were
arresting them.
At a large store at 110th Street and
Eighth Avenue, the doors were
smashed open and dozens of people
carried off appliances. A woman in
her middle- 50s walked into the store
and said laughingly: "Shopping with
no money required!"
Attesting to the atmosphere of a "col-
lective celebration", as one worried
columnist put it, a distribution center
was spontaneously organized at a
Brooklyn intersection, with piles of
looted goods on display for the tak-
ing. This was shown briefly on an
independent New York station,
WPIX-TV, but not mentioned in the
major newspapers.
The transformation of commodities
into free merchandise was only aided
by the coming of daylight, as the fes-
tivity and music continued. Mayor
Beame, at a noon (July 15) press con-
ference, spoke of the "night of ter-
ror", only to be mocked heartily by
the continuing liberation underway
throughout New York as he spoke.
Much, of course, was made of the
huge contrast between the events of
July 1977 and the relatively placid,
law-abiding New York blackout of
November 1965. One can only men-
tion the obvious fact that the domi-
nant values are now everywhere in
shreds. The "social cohesion" of class
society is evaporating. New York is
no isolated example.
Of course, there has been a progres-
sive decay in recent times of
restraint, hierarchy, and other
enforced virtues; it hasn't happened
all at once. Thus, in the 1960s, John
Leggett (in his Class, Race and
Labour) was surprised to learn upon
examining the arrest records of those
in the Detroit and Newark insurrec-
tions, that a great many of the partic-
ipants were fully employed. This
time, of the 176 people indicted as of
August 8 in Brooklyn (1,004 were
arrested in the borough), 48% were
regularly employed. (The same arti-
cle in the August 9 San Francisco
Chronicle where these figures
appeared also pointed out that only
"six grocery stores were looted while
39 furniture stores, 20 drug stores
and 17 jewelry stores and clothing
stores were looted"). And there are
other similarities to New York, natu-
rally; Life magazine of 4 August
1967 spoke of the "carnival-like
revel of looting" in Detroit, and
Professor Edward Banfield com-
mented that
Negroes and whites mingled in
the streets [of Detroit] and looted
amicably side by side. ..."
The main difference is probably one
of scale and scope - that in New York
virtually all areas, even the suburbs,
took the offensive and did so from the
moment the lights went out. Over $1
billion was lost in the thousands of
stores looted and burned, while the
cops were paralyzed. During the last
New York rioting, the 'Martin Luther
King' days of 1968, 32 cops were
injured; in one day in July 1977, 418
cops were injured.
The Left — all of it — has spoken only
of the high unemployment, the police
brutality; has spoken of the people of
New York only as objects, and pathet-
ic ones at that! The gleaming
achievements of the unmediated / un-
ideologized have all the pigs scared
shitless.
Green Anarchy
#13 out now!
Issue #13 (Summer '03) features:
"Youth Liberation: Burn the Schools
and Destroy the Media", "The Rising
of the Barbarians", "Between
Analysis and Vision: Moving Beyond
the Theory -Practice Dichotomy", "
A Quest Among the Bewildered",
"Thoughts On the City", "On the
world, direct a
(including a Br
ters, and much,
Sabotage of the Fine Arts", "Zero
War - Total Liberation",
"Decoding the Apocalypse of the
Militant Left", "Green Amazon
Economics 101", The Doctor is
Sick: Schizophrenia, Anti-
Psychiatry, and Anarchism", "News
from the Balcony", re-prints from
the finest of sources, updates
from insurrections around the
ction reports, state repression and prisoner info
eak the Chains Conference Manifesto), reviews, let-
much more! This one is 36-pages (our largest yet!)
Print copies of issues #6-12 are available for $3 each U$A/CAN ($4
world). Green Anarchy is free to prisoners.
P.O. Box 11331, Eugene, OR 97440, USA.
col lective@greenanarchy.org
ARTICLES
www.greenanarchist.org
GREEN ANARCHIST No.70 PAGE 6
APES OF WRATH
Ry Rob Rlack
From the Associated Press (which did such a bang-up job on the
Iraq war), dateline Boston, September 29, 2003: A 300-pound
gorilla will be kept off display after it escaped from its zoo enclo-
sure and roamed through the Franklin Park Zoo and along nearby
streets for nearly two hours before it was sedated with tranquiller darts,
according to Zoo New England CEO and President John Linehan.
Even zoos, it turns out, have CEO's, him in bondage. Not a 12 foot moat,
Undoubtedly so do circuses, and I not even an electrified fence stopped
don't mean the one in Washington,
and so does every other institution
which once thrilled children with
icons and images and visions of
another life, a life of magic and mar-
vel. Of course now they view images
quite as exciting or more so when
they go on-line. But a zoo or a circus
(they are not too different), even in
our flattened down era, puts on a
show which, for all its phoniness, sur-
passes anything virtual.
18 year old Courtney Roberson
worked at the zoo and was taking 2
year old Nia Scott, her friend's little
sister, for an outing when Little Joe
escaped, according to family mem-
bers. The gorilla grabbed the child,
threw her to the ground and jumped
on her, according to Dale McNeil,
Scott's godmother.
If so, there was remarkably little
harm done: "Neither zoo officials nor
Boston Police could provide any
information on the injuries. But fam-
ily members said Scott had a gash on
her cheek and needed several stitch-
es. Roberson [who was not thrown to
the ground and jumped] was bitten on
the back and scratched on the leg,
said her mother, Shamika Woumnm."
(I find her name even less likely than
her story.) Clearly the family mem-
bers saw their chance for a score and
wasted no time creating evidence.
The accusations against Little Joe are
grave but, I suspect, self-serving. If a
300 pound gorilla jumped on a two
year old girl, I would expect her to
incur serious injury, if not death, but
probably not just a gash on the cheek
For a rounded picture, we need to
look at it from Little Joe's point of
view. From the Associated Press we
further learn: In August, the 5 foot,
adolescent gorilla also escaped from
its section of the Tropical Forest
exhibit, which had a 12-foot- wide,
12-foot-deep, moat. No one was hurt
then, and zoo officials installed elec-
trified wires to keep him from escap-
ing again.
The Associated Press story, aided by
the family's litigation-oriented state-
ments, is all too obviously scripted
under the influence of the King Kong
and Mighty Joe Young films, with
adjustments for details. Little Nia
Scott is Fay Wray. Mighty - er, Little
Joe is framed, perhaps literally, by
these evocative antecedents, which it
is not necessary for the word-thrifty
Associated Pressman to mention
because they are deeply rooted in
popular consciousness. Little Joe, at a
first pass from the sensitive, anony-
mous Associated Press reporter, is
strikingly depicted as an African-
American rapist: "The gorilla
grabbed the child, threw her to the
ground and jumped on her, according
to Dale McNeil, Scott's godmother."
Then, and only after that impression
has sunk in, the AP journalist indi-
cates that Little Joe is perhaps as
much like Houdini as he is like King
Kong. Little Joe has twice thwarted
the best efforts of his captors to hold
the 5 foot tall, 300 pound young pri-
mate.
The movie the AP guy should have
reviewed, at least in his mind, before
writing his story was not King Kong
or Mighty Joe Young but The Great
Escape. Young male gorillas like
Little Joe, who was born in captivity,
pose problems because of their agili-
ty and restlessness, according to
Linehan. "They go through a stage
where, physically and psychological-
ly, they're growing much stronger,
and become much more lean and
long, and containment can be an
increasing challenge at that age," he
said.
Other young male primates go
through the same stage. Some of
them formed the anarchist Black
Blocs in Seattle, Genoa and else-
where. Others disperse their "agility
and restlessness" in frat parties, liber-
al politics, music subcultures or even
by joining the Army to meet cute
dumb hillbillies like "Daisy Mae"
Jessica Lynch. As that astute psychol-
ogist/CEO Linehan explains, they go
through a stage where they're becom-
ing strong (which, ^^^^^^^^^^
interest. For it seems that Little Joe is
not the only 300 pound adolescent pri-
mate in the picture. "He was too
strong for me, and I'm a big person,"
says teenage nanny and zoo employee
Courtney Roberson. "I weigh close to
300 pounds." In this, slightly more
plausible version, Little Joe knocked
Little Nia out of Roberson' s hands
"and stomped on her before going
after Roberson again." There is noth-
ing about what happened to Roberson,
or what happened at all, after Little
Joe's "going after" her. Presumably he
did nothing ungentlemanly. Since the
incidents recounted could not have
taken more than a minute, and Little
Joe was on the loose for two hours,
evidently once he got a good look at
Roberson he betook himself else-
where. Love hath no fury like a
woman scorned. And did Little Joe
"jump on" Little Nia (AP) or "stomp"
on her (Daily News)?
According to Nia's godmother, "When
he snatched the baby, the gorilla took
the baby and ran with it. And when he
went to run, he turned around and he
looked at Courtney and he dropped the
baby and ran after Courtney" - contra-
dicting her immediately previous
statement that Little Joe stomped
Little Nia. Dropping is not stomping.
Or did he drop-kick her? By the time
the case comes to trial, I wouldn't be
surprised if he did. The Daily News,
then, departs from the Hollywood par-
adigm of the Associated Press - this is
not a Fay Wray situation at all. Here
after the indignities
of childhood is a 1 1 The enslavement of Little Joe and so
heady realization)
and naturally they
cast about for some-
thing to test their
strength against. For
Little Joe, there was
an only and obvious
challenge: his cap-
tivity.
I used to live in the
Boston area and 1^^^^^^^^^
knew exactly where Little Joe
escaped from, and where he was
recaptured. Needless to say, there was
nowhere for him to live in Boston as
the magnificent animal that he is. He
would not survive the coming winter.
And since he was born in captivity, he
would not even survive in the rain
forest where gorillas belong, were he
released there.
This the CEO obviously does not
intend for his investment, since Little
Joe is one of 6 of the exhibition goril-
las he has acquired since 1998.
Except that now Little Joe, after his
recent adventure, is not on exhibit -
he's locked down — which is perhaps
a partial victory for Little Joe. I
remember Charlton Heston, in
Spartacus, howling in his cell, "I am
not an animal!" Would it have made
any difference if he were?
Truth being, as Nietzsche taught us,
multi-perspectival, we might set the
measured, classical restraint of the
Associated Press story beside the
romantic exuberance of the version in
the New York Daily News ("Teen Was
Helpless Against Raging Ape," Sept.
30, 2003). Much of the story is the
same, as we might expect, since the
writers are both American Journalists
pledged to Objectivity, but the Daily
News story focuses on the romantic
many other animals reminiscent of
ourselves indicates our failure to come
to terms with our own nature, which is
an animal nature. In domesticating ani-
mals we have made ourselves the ulti-
mate domesticated animal.
the helpless, innocent human female,
Little Nia, was a sort of bystander who
got in the way. This was something
between Little Joe and Big Courtney
Roberson, who probably looked more
like a young female gorilla in heat
than any animal the born-in-captivity,
hormonally charged up Little Joe had
ever seen. She may have played on
that.
There's some monkey business here.
After Little Joe's August breakout,
"zoo officials installed electrified
wires to keep him from escaping
again," in addition to the 12 foot
wide, 12 foot deep moat. How did he
get past all of that? "There's a lot we
have to find out, and we'll be review-
ing what happened," as CEO Linehan
is quoted in both stories as saying, so
it must be true.
I have a theory. It was an inside job.
Little Joe got out just before closing
time, i.e., just when many zoo
employees were probably getting off
work. I think Big Courtney Roberson
was one of them. She claims to have
been taking Little Nia "for an outing"
- not at the zoo, which was closing -
but apparently right outside, although
the neighborhood has no other attrac-
tions. I think Roberson, recalling the
publicity around Little Joe's first
escape, turned off the juice and let
him out, and then planted herself,
babe in hand, in his path. I wouldn't
be surprised if she were the aggres-
sor. I think what Courtney was court-
ing was a juicy lawsuit, or a tryst, or
both.
If I am right, the "raging ape" was the
victim here in a most immediate way.
He was set up and he was exploited.
But if I am wrong he is still a victim,
but in that case not the only one.
Incarceration in a zoo is a far more
serious wrong than a bite on the back
from a runaway gorilla.
Now that we know that we share
something like 98% of our DNA with
Little Joe and his kind, we might
rethink our relations with gorillas.
About 15 years ago, a visiting
Slovenian anarchist, Gregor Tome,
joined me for a visit to the renowned
Washington Zoo. An anti-Communist
dissident, he was especially curious
to see the pandas donated by the Red
Chinese. (Nobody calls them the
"Red Chinese" any more. Why not?
They haven't changed.) The monkey
house depressed him: "They're too
human," he said.
I know what he meant. I spent a
minute alone before a gorilla in a
cage. I looked him in the eye and he
looked me in the eye. Anyone could
see the intelligence and the pain - and
it was in his eyes too. Tome was quite
right but I would rephrase what he
said. 'We're too animal" is more like
it. The enslavement of Little Joe and
^^^^^^^^^^so many other ani-
mals eerily remi-
niscent of our-
selves really indi-
cates our failure to
come to terms with
our own nature,
which is an animal
nature. In domesti-
cating animals we
have made our-
selves the ultimate
domesticated ani-
^^^^^^HmaL For us to
escape, on an individual basis, from
civilization - from the state, the mar-
ket, the class system, from religions
and moralities - that is scarcely more
realistic than for Little Joe to pass a
quiet winter in Boston where he was
recaptured, "near a football stadium."
But we do differ in an important way
from our fellow animals. We have
language. Recent research establishes
that this is not the qualitative break it
was long thought to be. Gorillas
appear to have a rudimentary vernac-
ular language, and they can even be
taught English sign language in con-
trolled circumstances. Noam
Chomsky does not believe this, not
because it isn't true, but because it
refutes his Cartesian linguistic theory.
He is like those 16th century prelates
who looked through Galileo's tele-
scope and denied what they saw
because it could not be true.
In tribute to Chomsky's Scholastic
obtuseness, the researchers who
study Koko and her fellow gorillas
have named their dumbest gorilla stu-
dent "Nim Chimsky." Language -
especially written language - has
served as an instrument of domina-
tion. Like most truths about the life
we live, this one sounds extravagant
or overstated or metaphorical, but
that is only because it is so difficult to
33
stand apart from that life, if only in
thought, to see it as it is. It is a finding
of sober archaeological fact that for
the first one thousand years of writing
(in ancient Sumer - now known as
Iraq), it was devoted exclusively to
government record-keeping and
occasional chest-thumping by the
Ozymandias- style autocrats who still
rule in the Cradle of Civilization,
only now they are American. Literacy
was so restricted to bureaucrats that
Hammurabi, for instance, probably
could not read the Code of
Hammurabi. Now history is not nec-
essarily destiny, but it certainly
should inform those who would be
makers of destiny, if they know
what's good for them.
The question is whether there is any
other way than through language to
get out of what language has gotten
us into. Even those who say "no"
contradict what they say just by say-
ing it. Language posits the only pos-
sibility, if there is one, of the Great
Escape. And it has to be a Great
Escape, a collective adventure,
because anything less than that is just
like Little Joe busting out to - to
where? to what? That's just it. Little
Joe got out, but while he had a place
to escape from, he had no place to
escape to. I wonder what he thought
of the streets of Boston which he
wandered for two hours. He could
hardly have found there what he was
looking for, if he'd even thought that
far ahead. I know I never did.
I have given my reasons for doubting
whether Little Joe went ape, but even
if he did, going ape is something apes
never do in the wild and in the socie-
ty (for they have one) of other apes.
Going human is really a better, if also
an inadequate description of what he
is accused of doing. Our prisons - our
human zoos — are filled with humans
who have gone ape, which really just
means, stir-crazy They experience
domestication literally with a
vengeance. Elsewhere, in school or in
the workplace, it's not usually so
obvious. But your boss has made a
monkey out of you all the same.
Alexander Pope wrote a couplet -
about a dog, not an ape, but he was
saying the same thing I am (Kew was
a royal palace):
/ am his Highness' dog at Kew
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you ?
Free Little Joe and all other political
prisoners ! A zoo and a circus - these
words are not only effective
metaphors for our civilized society,
they really surpass metaphor by verg-
ing on straight reportage, much like
the Objective reportage of the
Associated Press and the Daily News.
It is no accident that we so often
reach for one of these words to dis-
parage some feature of the political or
social scene. They fit the hand so
well. It never required DNA evi-
dence, not for anyone "with ears to
see," as Ivan Stang once phrased it,
to notice that the animals deserved-
ly called the great apes are amazing-
ly like ourselves. I have never
understood how any creationist
moron could visit a zoo and look at
the primates and come away with
his Bible bigotry intact. He is, I sup-
pose, our own Nim Chimsky.
Unfortunately, our Nim Chimsky
has the right to vote.
PAGE 7 GREEN ANARCHIST No.70
www.greenanarchist.org
ARTICLES
WINNING THE WAR, LOSING THE PEACE
Ecological Revolution Flounders on Bougainville
ith a population of only 160,000 Bougainville has managed to
close and keep closed one of the biggest copper mines in the
world. Despite having to fight the Australian- armed Papua
New Guinea (PNG) army, they have held their ground for twelve years
with home made guns made out of water piping and planks, scavenged
mine trucks and petrol made from coconuts.
In 1969 a RTZ pic copper mine was responded by sending in the military.
forcibly established. From the begin-
ning the people resisted. News
footage of women fighting with riot
cops over survey pegs received inter-
national coverage. In Bougainville
women are the traditional landhold-
ers; land is passed from woman to
woman. On this occasion it was clear
their land was not being passed on in
the traditional manner.
The building of the mine made 800
villagers landless and another 1,400
without fishing rights as land was
seized and the subsistence life of gar-
dening and fishing was destroyed.
220 hectares of rainforest was poi-
soned, burned and bulldozed.
After 20 years the mine had grown to
a crater half a kilometre deep and
nearly 7km in circumference. Over a
billion tonnes of waste was dumped
into the Jaba River valley creating a
wall of waste hundreds of metres
high, turning one of the islands
biggest river systems bright blue.
After ignored protests, petitions and
legal claims the Bougainvilleans had
had enough. A handful of islanders
stole company explosives, destroying
electricity pylons, buildings and
machinery. By using guerrilla tactics
they succeeded in closing the mine.
Until the war broke out in 1988, the
mine accounted for around 45% of
PNG's total export earnings. Without
these earnings PNG is going bust.
PNG, with the assistance of Australia,
State soldiers strafed villages from
helicopters. The Bougainville
Revolutionary Army (BRA) was
formed to defend the land and people
from further exploitation. Ten years
of war followed.
PNG herded people into 'care cen-
tres' (concentration camps) and
enforced a medical blockade on the
island. 10,000 Bougainvilleans died
in the conflict. Despite being heavily
outgunned the BRA succeeded in
keeping the mine closed. They
pushed the state soldiers off most of
their island and forced a peace. The
land of the mine is slowly regenerat-
ing. The people have returned to their
age-old subsistence agriculture.
Unfortunately the people who origi-
nated the revolution — the people
local to the destruction and with the
most to lose — have now become iso-
lated from the rest of
Bougainvilleans. Most of the others
seem to want to re-open the mine and
instigate other developments, The
locals are holed up in their mountain
stronghold.
Francis Ona, the instigator of the
original revolution, is vilified by the
mainstream press and virtually all
communication with the rest of the
world is controlled by the pro-
development lobby. Ona's group,
the Me'ekamui Defence Force,
(MDF) have about fifty armed peo-
ple to defend the site of the mine,
and the BRA now stand in
opposition to them, with about a
thousand.
Recently the BRA tried to
remove a MDF roadblock bar-
ring foreigners passage to the
mine, killing some of the defend-
ers. All the NGOs who once sup-
ported the struggle against colo-
nialism now seem to see nothing
wrong with what they call the
'peace process' and are slagging
off Ona and his people, who are
ultimately the ones whose deci-
sion about their land should be
final. There are lessons to be
learned here about both NGOs
and 'nationalist' struggles (not to
mention 'peace' processes), and
the wisdom of co-operating with
those who hold views antipathet-
ic to our own.
Very little news comes out at all
from the MDF; the little that
does is hopelessly mangled by
corporate lackey journalists.
Unsurprisingly, Ona doesn't trust
outsiders, and particularly not
journalists. He hasn't been inter-
viewed in the 6 years since the
BRA won the war, until recently.
In that interview, after being
accused of having no connection with
the Bougainville peace process, he
said:
"I never have any no connection with
the peace process on Bougainville.
You know, peace on Bougainville is
always here, yeah, but what they are
trying to import on Bougainville is
trying to... economise peace, you
know, they want to put money into
the process and then try to... I see it
as a psychological warfare on
Bougainville, yeah."
GREEN ANARCHISTS GATHER IN PENNSYLVANIA
The 1st Green Anarchist Gathering
took place July 10-13, despite the
FBI. The first site was a private
campground at the intersection of the
Appalachians and Alleghenies. The
Feds thought it too close to one of the
largest underground natural gas stor-
age facilities in the US, a facility on
the Homeland Security watch list, so
we got a call from the campground
owner: "Your event is being can-
celed. We've had several visits from
the FBI and other law enforcement.
You lied to us. You didn't tell us you
were terrorists."
The FBI under Mike Hudak of the
Scranton / Wilkes-Barre office had
not only visited the campground but
sent Pennsylvania state troopers to
the township meeting to inform citi-
zens of this redneck idyll of the
vipers poised to descend on their
community. "Just look at their web
site," they urged, giving them the
URL to the Black and Green pages.
Helicopters and black sedans then
showed up. With help from a State
Park official, we were back on track
within a week at a new location only
60 miles away.
THE GATHERING
There were 100+ pre-registered via
the web site and we were hoping for
even more, so I opted for communal
catering, like the Anarchist Teapot at
EF!UK Gatherings. It was a younger
crowd; out of the 80 there, only 10 of
us were over 30. Most were from
eastern and southern states. The
downside of larger workshops was
that organizers spoke too much and
newbies too little.
A real highlight of the gathering was
the two full days of primitive skill
share with Tim, a 'professional' from
the Teaching Drum School, who
instructed the future primitives in
tracking, shelter building, wild plant
identification skills, and answered
lots of questions in an informative
and good-natured way.
There was a conflict resolution work-
shop where many of us found we
faced the same issues with regards to
finding alternative ways of dealing
with conflict without making appeals
to authorities. Many had been
involved in conflicts with individuals
who could be clinically categorised
as 'mentally disturbed'. We discussed
how we all are misfits, but those
who'd really lost all grasp of reality
are drawn to activist communities
whose tolerance and openness to
society's oppressed may be well
known. Those with truly anti- social,
if not violent, tendencies can cause
real problems in terms of the emo-
tional health of those around them.
Ted Kaczynski's 'Hit 'Em Where It
Hurts' article (Green Anarchy #8) led
to lively and most interesting discus-
sion, especially to Fed infiltrators.
Some of us tried clarifying arguments
for economic and infra- structural
sabotage.
There was a civ and patriarchy ses-
sion that I found boring, with men in
attendance professing their genuine
open-mindedness and unconditional
support of women in general and the
women bringing up anecdotal evi-
dence to the contrary.
I find this inevitably veers into the
issue of rape, and then tends to be
discussed in the same hypersensitive
terms liberals use. As a woman and
anarchist I find this discouraging. I
can't help but feel that elevating that
particular violation to the status of
most heinous just an ideology of
women's victimization beyond reme-
dy. Too bad that the state has the
monopoly on violence, our communi-
ties could sort out that issue amongst
ourselves with much more success.
One goal of the Gathering was to
exchange info, facilitated by the pres-
ence of the A-Hole', the Coalition
Against Civilization's tent full of
Anarcho-primitivist scholarship and
agit prop. The only security issue was
potential confrontation with 'Young
Marines' in the adjacent camping
area, who's cries of "Yes Sir!" we had
to endure each day, all day long, but
nothing happened except their com-
plaint that they saw someone from
our group naked next to a car, chang-
ing clothes. Hope to see you there
next year!
Papua New Guinea has most gra-
ciously agreed to allow Bougainville
a referendum on independence in ten
years time, but Ona says there's no
reason to wait. Bougainville can go it
alone. "I don't know why ten
years. . ." he says. "Right now we can
have a referendum. Bougainvilleans
through the last 14 years have proven
that we can look after ourselves."
Francis Ona has literally stuck to his
guns. His men remain heavily armed,
untouched by the 'disarmament
process' (the BRA and foreign inter-
feres still have guns...) which
they've rejected. At the roadblock,
the MDF exchanged fire with the
BRA as recently as March this year.
Ona says "It's really a violation of the
peace process on Bougainville. . . I've
got a paper here which proves that the
UN and PNG has planned all this.
You know, it's written here." He
asked the fuck wit journalist to take
the paper but was ignored.
In spite of the situation, the MDF
appear confident. "The outside input
into Bougainville has destroyed our
people's lives. We've gone through
fourteen years without money and we
still exist." As with all people who are
truly resisting the onslaught of civili-
sation, it's hard to know what we can
do in the west in solidarity with them.
It seems that anything we do to
undermine civilisation here will be
more useful than trying to get through
the maze of disinformation put up by
the 'human rights' and development
organisations.
There is an international spokesper-
son for the MDF, Clive Porabou,
working out of PNG. Typically, he
has support only from a few individ-
uals; the cowardly NGOs go along
with the oppressors.
To get news out and gather support
for the struggle the MDF need to get
their transmitter repaired.
If you can help to fund new commu-
nications equipment (even just a few
quid will help), contact GA and we
can put you in touch with them. See
P. 14 for addresses
The Panguna landowners' story
shows that there is really no point in
working with such organisations.
These are the enemies of freedom as
much as the more obvious ones are.
Desire for freedom.
-MDF Statement, 26 Sep 2003
From the South to the Northern tip of
Bougainville there is a growing "rest-
lessness" for freedom and that free-
dom is total Independence. In Central
Bougainville No Go Zone where
Inter-Government Relations Minister
sir Peter Barter focus his attention,
Francis Ona and his Me'ekamui
National council and the Me'ekamui
Defence force have no right to stop
people from seeking medical assis-
tance or joining the imported peace.
Even in the peace areas there are
Me'ekamui Hardliners with
Me'ekamui basic aims and principal,
Independence. Me'ekamui Defence
Force are not the party to weapons
disposal, those are BRA A company
who joined the peace process the
same people who signed the petition.
The road block at Morgen junction
will remain. Bougainvilleans go in
and out of the No Go Zone areas
freely but outsiders are not allow.
No Go Zone does not prevents people
from proper service, assistance and
medical treatment but it is helping
them to keep their birth right.
Me'ekamui Goverment and its
Millitary Arm [ MDF ] is not disrupt-
ing the peace process, why blame the
Me'ekamui Government?
Bougainville peace is from time
immemorable, long live peace on
Bougainville.
Clive Porabou, MDF Spokeperson
ALT TECH
www.greenanarchist.org
GREEN ANARCHIST No.70 PAGE 8
FUCK 'ALTERNATIVE' TECHNOLOfiY! FUCK
THE 'ALTERNATIVE' GREEN GHETTO!
Standing up on this hill, as the sun filters through the trees you
occasionally catch the reflection of solar panels on the roofs of
the houses beyond the wind farm. The gentle swishing of turbine
blades is inaudible here, but the hum of a tractor is just perceptible as
is sows next year's bio fuel crop in the fields below....
Though the reality of alternative tech-
nology providing a "green" and sus-
tainable life for us all in the 21st cen-
tury may seem a long way off, may
seem an almost impossible task of
enormous proportions, it is becoming
more widely accepted as a necessary
step in the progress of our industrial
society It is, however, rarely seen for
the sham it is.
cal determinism. Just because it's
possible it doesn't follow that it's a
good idea.
Many have been fooled into thinking
that this new product of consumer
capitalism will further the goals of
those seeking sustainability without
questioning the use of electricity
itself and the innately unsustainable
nature of all
tinker with the system (however you
dress that up in anarcho-leftist rheto-
ric), creating a green tinged society (a
la Bookchinite 'Social Ecology') or
whether your desire is to embark
upon a project that seeks to dismantle
all that curtails a more authentic exis-
tence . Though there are apparently
still some anarchists who believe that
controlling the means of production
would somehow allow the develop-
ment of a libertarian society, it must
be realised that the technological sys-
tem is simply a part of the structure of
domination that (one would think)
anarchists strive to destroy.
SAFETY j vftKW.NO
'IVJTO WlT U-iy TO <t q«i^
~ „ .J
The dis
astrously
cliched picture painted above is
incomplete without a quick look
behind the scenes.
Though minute details of the industri-
al processes employed are beyond the
scope of this article, and frankly do
not interest me, even a cursory exam-
ination will show that the manufac-
ture of photovoltaic panels, wind
gennies and bio fuel production facil-
ities is not a particularly green (or
alternative) business. From mineral
and metal ore extraction (think open
cast, think indigenous land rights,
think health and safety) to metal
purification (think blast furnace,
think slag heaps, think massive ener-
gy consumption) to manufacturing
(think conveyer belts, think toxic
effluents, think wage slavery) to
transport (think container ships, think
road deaths, think more and more
fucking airports) to mass consumer
society (think, no don't think, con-
sume), when western industrial socie-
ty decides it wants something,
regardless of the apparently benign
nature of the product (or even it's
intended use in excusing the excesses
of our society), the product has a
price attached to it, namely the "con-
cealed drudgery of many and the
despoliation of the natural world" 1
There seem to be many people in the
alternative green ghetto who have
become engrossed in the provision of
power through 'alternative' means,
usually at festivals and free parties,
and who even see this as a form of
green activism. Embarrassingly this
mostly takes the form of boys playing
with their (hi-tech) toys. An unfortu-
nate group caught out by technologi-
t h e
industries
involved in its
consumption.
Although industrial produc-
tion (of alt-tech gear or otherwise)
is inherently unsustainable (surely
with just a bit more technology...)
some products are often justified if
they, for instance, allow autonomy or
independence to those in struggle, but
then the same goes for making use of
any of the tools of civilization in
order to fight against it. But people
tend to consume 'alt tech' as a lazy
alternative to using more inventive
methods, which are usually more in
conflict with the system.
The problem arises around so-called
'ethical' consumption and the quasi-
religious zeal that surrounds the cult
that is alternative-technology Ethical
consumption is steeped in petty
moralism and guilt, but rarely chal-
lenges consumption itself.
As anarchists we shouldn't look to
the marketplace to fulfil our needs -
but rather seek to feed off the detritus
of civilization whilst attacking the
pillars that are its foundation.
What are we doing with all this
'alternative' electricity? Whether
it's being fed into the grid or used
where it's made (via lead- acid bat-
teries), it is the use of electricity
itself that must be questioned, not
where it comes from. In the same
way that the suggestion that our
vehicles could be fuelled by veg-
etable oil does not question car cul-
ture, the cult of electricity is rarely
examined. From computers to
sound-systems, light-bulbs to
fridge-freezers all of these things
just add to the devastation of the
natural world, and severely limit
any chance of salvaging a genuine
unmediated human existence.
It would be foolish to forget that a
green city is still a city. It comes
down to whether you merely want to
Technology is the
sum of mediations
between us and the
natural world and
the sum of those
separations mediat-
ing us from each other.
It is all the drudgery
and toxicity
required to pro-
duce and
reproduce the
stage of
hyper- alienation
we live in. 2
It may have become apparent that I
am using the terms technology and
alternative technology interchange-
ably, but it should be obvious by now
that there can be no reasonable differ-
entiation between them. The notion
that technology is neutral and exists
independently of social relationships
has no basis.
Technology is not a simple tool
which can be used in any way
we like. It is a form of social
organization, a set of social rela-
tions. It has its own laws. If we
are to engage in its use, we must
accept its authority. The enor-
mous size, complex interconnec-
tions and stratification of
tasks which make up
modern technological
systems make -
authoritarian com-
mand necessary and
independent, individ-
ual decision-making
impossible.
(Fifth Estate Quoted from
'The Primitivist Primer'
by John Moore). At the
heart of the technologi-
cal system are the
division of labour and
specialisation. ResuUin^
from these are dependen-
cy. We are held to
ransom, dependent
on others, childlike in
the face of the complex
organisation of technologi-
cal society, alienated
from the natural envi-
ronment.
Most anarchists
recognise that the state,
private property, the
commodity system, the
patriarchal family and
organized religion are
inherently dominating
institutions and systems
that need to be
destroyed if we are to
create a world in
which we are all free
to determine our lives as we see
fit. Thus, it is strange that the
same understanding is not
applied to the industrial techno-
logical system.
It appears that what is needed is a
seditious mutiny of the technological
mindset that seems to be so pervasive
even within so called 'alternative'
green and radical circles. That 'alter-
native' technology will fail to avert
any of the pitfalls of conventional
technological approaches is clear.
Therefore its status among many as
some form of tool of a future ecolog-
ical society is grounded in shallow
and ill thought out analysis of the cur-
rent technological society we find
ourselves in and the historical forces
that brought this about.
Never before have people been
so infantalised, made so depend-
ent on the machine for every-
thing; as the earth rapidly
approaches its extinction due to
technology, our souls are shrunk
and flattened by its pervasive
rule. Any sense of wholeness and
freedom can only return by the
undoing of the massive division
of labour at the heart of techno-
logical progress. This is the liber-
atory project in all its depth. 4
Notes
1 . John Zerzan 'On the Transition; Postscript
to Future Primitive'
or on the web here
http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/fp.htm
2. John Zerzan 'Technology' Future Primitive
CAL Press
or on the web here
www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/technology.htm
3. from 'The Machinery of control: A Critical
Look at Technology ',
Wilful Disobedience Vol. 3, No. 2
4. from 'Technology' by John Zerzan from
Future Primitive CAL Press.
Or on the web here
http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/
technology.htm
MORE ALTERNATIVE PROBLEMS
Geothermal Plot
The Shasta, Modoc and Pit River
nations peoples have told Calpine
corporation and CalEnergy General
that they do not want development in
the Medicine Lake region.
Two 50 Megawatt plants are pro-
posed. Sitting on the southern edge of
the Cascade Mountains, the tree-
shrouded Lake, the watershed of the
Sacramento River, is critical to
Indians. The mountains are consid-
ered sacred.
Around Telephone Flat, the areas are
used for vision quests and for the
gathering of healing herbs. And there
are also women's mountains, where
they go to get their power. Over 100
years ago the same tribes were deci-
mated by gold rush miners.
The Death of Rivers
If the James Bay project in Quebec is
completed, it will embrace over 30
major dams and 500 dikes.
Completed in 1995 LG1 is churning
out 1,368 megawatts of electricity.
More is added all the time.
The project threatens the way of life
of the Cree and the Inuit. The James
Bay wetlands and forests are habitat
of lynx, black bears, waerfowl, and
one of North America's largest cari-
bou herds.
The new complex would take a tum-
bling, 225 -mile-long river and con-
vert much of its length into a series of
artificial slack- water lakes. These
reservoirs would submerge more than
a thousand miles of riverine lands
and untamed forests.
PAGE 9 GREEN ANARCHIST No.70
www.greenanarchist.org
ALT TECH
FUSION IS HO SOLUTION
An antidote to the usual, incredible hype
Alternative technology tends to be sold as small / human scale and
so decentralisable and autonomous until such time as the 'pow-
ers-that-be' actually take it seriously, at which point it becomes
a mega-project under centralised expert control. Witness wind power
spawning huge 100m high wind farms, with wave power next to get
the same treatment - and it's typically those pushing such energy gen-
eration as 'alternatives' that get to be the experts 'benevolently' impos-
ing them as soon as the government money starts to come in.
No one could pretend fusion is anything but hi-tech, highly centralised,
highly expertise-dependant and demanding huge injections of funding
and power, but some still believe it is somehow "clean" and can yield
massive amounts of energy, like the old 'Atoms for Peace' / 'too cheap
to meter' codswallop they used to sell us fission back in the 1950s.
Needless to say, this is the opposite of the truth.
First off, the isotopes of hydrogen
smashed together at super-hot (plas-
ma) temperatures are radioactive.
Sure enough, deuterium only has a
half-life of 12 years — one reason why
its use as a 'doping agent' in US
nuclear weapons has quietly rendered
most of them obselete — but the free
neutrons generated by this process
often impact the torus 's cladding and
not the hydrogen fuel, which really is
a long-term waste disposal problem.
Secondly, as well as being radioac-
tive, tritium can cause cancer, birth
defects and other such problems.
Dealing with tritium emissions inci-
dental to conventional fission reac-
tors, the Conception Group discov-
ered a Health & Welfare Canada
(HWC) report admitting: 1
a 'statistically significant' corre-
lation of central nervous system
(CNS) birth defects with large
releases of tritium to air: five
Pickering infants with CNS
defects (anencephaly, micro-
cephaly, spina bifida with hydro-
cephalus, and two others whose
defect code was not on record)
were born in January- July 1978,
following the airborne tritium
releases of April-October 1977.
Medical experts link CNS birth
defects to radiation exposure, as
found after the atomic bombing
of Japan.
Fusion researchers concede this is a
problem, but claim they only need a
small amount of tritium to initiate
neutron emission from the deuterium.
Engineers admit, however, that "a tri-
tium inventory of 40 kg" as the mini-
mum required to ensure viability.
Thirdly, as hydrogen is such a small
molecule, virtually anything is
porous to it, making containment
much, much more difficult than for
fissionable materials. Hydrogen is
highly explosive (witness the
Hindenberg!) and will be used in
combination with super-high temper-
atures, making plant safety a big
issue. One nuclear engineer frankly
stated: 2 "I would be a lot more con-
cerned about a Tritium fire twenty
miles away than a meltdown at a
fission plant". There are also likely to
be day-to-day hazards caused by the
intense electromagnetic forces used
to keep the hydrogen plasma off the
torus wall, likely affecting workers'
reproductive and central nervous
systems and potentially causing
leukaemia, if typical of other non-
ionizing radiation hazards. The same
spectacle as occurred at Sellafield —
where workers there were warned
not to have children — is likely to
occur at any future viable fusion
plant.
Fourthly, as noted already, both tri-
tium and deuterium are key compo-
nents of nuclear weapons — indeed, it
was Lawrence Livermore's Edward
Teller (a.k.a. 'Doctor Strangelove')
that first promoted them in the form
of the hydrogen bomb, while he was
still at Los Alamos — and so repre-
sents a proliferation risk, with all the
'security state' ramifications of that.
So much for 'fusion for peace', not
that anyone has ever pretended any-
thing so patently stupid - and as Karl
Jung argued against fission in his
Nuclear State three decades ago, a
nuclear state is inevitably ultimately
also a totalitarian state.
Fifthly, fusion is mega- science feed-
ing a Promethian mega- science men-
tality, with huge resources diverted
into keeping such experts on the hi-
tech gravy train. The CANDU torus
(also known as ITEC) cost the
Canadian government £14 billion
when established in 1992. It is a pure
research facility which will never
generate a watt of electricity for non-
research use and, typical of those that
have had a living gifted to them, all
objections by citizen groups such as
Sierra Club Canada have so far arro-
gantly been waved aside.
Finally, despite the industry hype
we'd all be on fusion power by 1980,
not a watt of electricity has been gen-
erated by fusion for research purpos-
es as well as for non-research ones.
Nuclear engineers admit: 3
The biggest issue facing DT is
the actual breeding of the tritium
in the Lithium blanket. It is not a
simple problem and may be the
death of DT fusion if no practi-
cal way of efficiently breeding
the tritium and harvesting it
quickly without having even
minimal losses. This is the part
that is the most pessimistic, in
my opinion.
In other words, that fusion has always
been complete hype and that they
may never get it working at all. In
this, it certainly is fission+, where at
least it was only the safe disposal of
the waste they hadn't figured out
before spinning stories to suck the
public purse dry.
NOTES
1 Conception Research, Postal Station "B",
Box One, Toronto Ontario, Canada M5T
2T2.
2 Personal e-communication
3 ibid.
HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS
Energy of the Future, or South Seas Bubble?
by Mr. Blobby
In a world facing wars for oil, we des-
perately need an 'alternative' energy
source for the future. Hydrogen fuel
cells, as used in the Space Shuttle, are
the energy source of the future,
according to the hype surrounding
fuel cell research. But research funds
are worth lots of $$$; so how well
founded in scientific reality is the cur-
rent optimism in the face of problems
which beset the hydrogen fuel cell
industry?
Look at a working model of a hydro-
gen fuel cell, and you see a wonder of
science: Hydrogen 'burned' with no
smoke, water the only exhaust. Look
a little deeper into this miraculous
technology, and you see that the
heavy and cumbersome hydrogen
fuel tank is only large enough to sup-
ply fuel for barely a few minutes if it
is fitted into a car used to give a
flashy film promotion of fuel cell
technology.
The car in a video to hype the fuel-
cell technology stops moments after
the 2 minute video stops. It's run out
of fuel already. To get the number of
miles between refills you'd expect
from a petrol or diesel powered car,
the super cold liquid hydrogen fuel
tank would need to be bigger and
heavier than the car could fit. Recent
developments have brought smaller
and lighter fuel tanks, but the prob-
lem of fuel storage will not go away.
Then there is the problem of how to
make the hydrogen to use in the fuel
cells.
Naturally, no non-nuclear means
is known to make terrestrial
hydrogen that does not consume
considerably more energy than it
delivers. Note that commercial
hydrogen is nearly always pro-
duced by the reformation of
methane. But the methane really
has to want to reform.
Please also note that because of
the staggering loss of energy, use
of electrolysis for bulk hydrogen
apps is a really, really dumb
thing to do.
It is the equivalent of exchang-
ing two US dollars for one
Mexican peso,
w w w. tinaj a. com/h2gas0 1 . asp
Harnessing energy from geothermal
springs in Iceland, to make hydrogen,
has led the fuel-cell hype industry to
claim Iceland will become the
"Kuwait of the North." In reality, it's
a scenario similar to the bullshit
claims made about vegetable oil bio-
diesel fuel. It can never supply more
than a tiny fraction of world energy
needs, even when exploitation levels
reach their natural boundaries.
On Internet sites that contribute to the
hydrogen fuel-cell hype, there is little
or no mention of these insurmount-
able problems: At the time of writing
this, I did an Internet Google search
for "hydrogen fuel cell" and got
32,200 results. I didn't have many
hours to click through hundreds of
links looking to find a site not part of
the bullshit hype...
Hydrogen's potential use in fuel and
energy applications includes power-
ing vehicles, running turbines or fuel
cells to produce electricity, and .
generating heat and electricity for
buildings. The current focus is on
hydrogen's use in fuel cells.
A fuel cell works like a battery but
does not run down or need recharg-
ing. It will produce electricity and
heat as long as fuel (hydrogen) is sup-
plied. A fuel cell consists of two elec-
trodes — a negative electrode (or
anode) and a positive electrode (or
cathode) — sandwiched around an
electrolyte. Hydrogen is fed to the
anode, and oxygen is fed to the cath-
ode. Activated by a catalyst, hydro-
gen atoms separate into protons and
electrons, which take different paths
to the cathode. The electrons go
through an external circuit, creating a
flow of electricity. The protons
migrate through the electrolyte to the
cathode, where they reunite with oxy-
gen and the electrons to produce
water and heat. Fuel cells can
be used to power vehicles or
to provide electricity and
heat to buildings.
The hype industry gets
off scot-free with out-
rageous bullshit. One
Stanley Meyer
claimed to
ic laws, energy conservation,
Faraday's laws, the nature of Fourier
Series, hydrogen overvoltage proper-
ties, the concept of mathematical
integration, the max power transfer
theorem, and at least one fundamen-
tal current standard. His little scam
ripped off investors life savings, and
eventually they complained. Judge
Corzine of the Ohio court system
found a "gross and egregious fraud",
but imposed a fine of only $1.
have
invented
new
way of
making
hydrogen which
violated thermodynam
MODERN PRIMITIVES
www.greenanarchist.org
GREEN ANARCHIST No.70 PAGE 10
THE PERENNIAL WILD MEN
The 'war on terror' is their fear of a wild planet.
Despite 9/11, Americans are still more likely to be struck by light-
ening than by terrorists, but only obsess about the latter. 1 They
are thousands of times more likely to be shot by spouses, neigh-
bours or workmates than terrorists, despite which they vigorously
defend their 'right to bear arms'. The sociologist William Catton has
done us all the favour of putting fears about terrorism in context: 2
The annual death toll from influenza in the United States is almost
ten times the seven or eight year global toll from terrorism, yet
most people tend to think of flu as more of a nuisance than a dire
peril.
US foreign policy is led by a 'war on terror' that has killed more peo-
ple — typically as 'collateral damage' — than the 'terrorists' targeted by
several orders of magnitude and blithely draws up lists of convenient-
ly oil-rich 'terrorist states' to intimidate or invade when it is in fact
only the US itself that has been judged terrorist by the International
Court for Reagan's 1987 mining of Nicauragua's harbours. Claiming
the 'war on terror' is in defence of Freedom (capital F used ironically
to indicate the 'freedom' concerned is purely abstract rhetoric never to
be applied in practice), administrative 'anti-terrorist' legislation has
practically extinguished any freedoms of assembly, association and
expression, reinitiated internment without trial and McCarthyism in
America, and jailed Black people (called 'Portland Asians' as they
were devout Moslems!) for exercising their supposed 'right to bear
arms' for self-defence against transparently obvious state tyranny in
the more hick, Islamophobic parts of the nation.
The absurdities and hypocrisies of the Nicaraugua, those labeled 'terrorist'
'war on terror' should be obvious to
anybody not mummified by the Flag,
but on that you can go and read any-
thing by Noam Chomsky or the small
industry of liberal publishing around
him if you need to. The purpose of
this essay is not to further elaborate
on such detail, but to examine why
'terrorism' has exercised such a firm
grasp on the modern imagination.
'Terrorism' has not just been sold
through the spectacle of media
manipulation or its logical flip side,
public gullibility — those are but the
techniques of power — but has actual-
ly taken root. We must go a lot deep-
er to understand the unique appeal of
'terrorism' — why it is being sold,
rather than some competing compli-
ance brand.
POWER AND CHAOS
The term 'terrorism' has been so
tainted by political expediency that it
now has no agreed definition. As the
Reagan administration showed over
by others won't willingly accept their
definitions, and even when someone
takes the rare and strange decision to
label themselves 'terrorist' — as FC
(the Freedom Club) did in the
Unabomber manifesto, Industrial
Society and Its Future — others may
refuse them this label because they
feel it confers too much prestige !
Thus, having sold FC as a much-
needed example of domestic terror-
ism throughout the entire 1980s, the
FBI relabeled Unabomber suspect
Ted Kaczynski a "serial killer" when
he came to trial in 1995 as they'd
been so humiliated by their inability
to catch him in almost two decades,
undermining their credibility (and
potential funding) as an effective
counter-terrorist force (and, inciden-
tally, FC's potential to inspire further
militancy).
At best, terrorism is defined as some
sort of non- state-level indiscriminate
targeting intended to bring about a
crisis in the state unable to meet its
Social Contract obligations to protect
its own citizenry. At worst — and this
is really the point, its utility as a
mechanism for maintaining State
power — terrorism's definition all too
easily broadens out to mean 'any-
thing opposed to us'.
Again, you can check out concerned
liberal scholarship for the more obvi-
ous implications of this — such as
how, by appealing to Social Contract
theory, terrorists paradoxically affirm
the State they're attacking and state-
hood generally, although this should
hardly come as a surprise concerning
nationalist groups — but that is not my
purpose here. What interests me is
that the indiscriminate nature of ter-
rorism is mirrored in the indiscrimi-
nate nature of its definition. Lacking
numbers or firepower to take on the
armed forces of the state toe-to-toe,
the terrorist adopts tactics of clandes-
tinity and unpredictable, symbolic
attacks. Consequently, the terrorist
could be just about anyone and —
more significantly — so could his or
her target.
Many advocates of armed struggle
will huff and puff about this, insisting
they are not terrorists because they
are very careful in their selection of
targets. Well, all the best to them, but
the State is playing the equally
inevitable opposite game of narrow-
ing down who the terrorist is likely to
be to as small a group as possible and
presenting potential targets as as
large a group as possible, as everyone
else, to isolate and provoke discrimi-
nation against the struggle's support-
ers. It is standard militant rhetoric
that unlike in conventional warfare,
one successful action is the equiva-
lent of a thousand additional symbol-
ic ones, those that could have been hit
and may be in future. This, in part,
explains why reactions to terrorism in
terms of overestimation of personal
threat is so great - so useful both to
terrorist and counter-terrorist.
Clearly, the target's perception of
their targetability is something large-
ly out of the militants' control. Even
if they have been strict about what is
and is not an appropriate target to
date, the very virtue of guerilla war-
fare, its unpredictability, means that
new targets will be sought in future.
Also, aside from rare highly-disci-
plined and typically compromised
groups, militant groups are highly
Protean, inclined to splits, break-
aways and even government pseudo-
gang activity, meaning splinter
groups may well hit targets the parent
group refuses.
What, then, are we really looking at
here, this perception of anonymous,
random violence? We are looking at
chaos. And how does this culture deal
with chaos? What is its perception of
that? As the celebrated anthropologist
Mary Douglas writes in her seminal
Purity and Danger: 3
As we know it, dirt is essentially
disorder. There is no such thing
as absolute dirt: it exists in the
eye of the beholder.... Dirt
offends against order.
Eliminating it is not a negative
movement, but a positive effort
to organise the environment.
On a visceral cultural level, then, ter-
rorists are not the worthy chaps with
legitimate grievances and desperate
but necessary measures they take
themselves for, they are dirt, social
pollution to be removed from State
society like some deadly plague
organism — typically by the State
itself and its loyal subordinates, the
better to magnify its own power. The
Bush administration, for one, uses
exactly this rhetoric — likely uncon-
sciously appealing to society's
instinctual revulsion against pollu-
tion, given Dubya's proverbial lack
of erudition — and it is no surprise
that references to terrorists acquiring
germ weapons and 'dirty bombs', all
previously the exclusive property of
governments, are now the typically
baseless stock in trade of anti-terror-
ist propaganda.
From this, it should be obvious what
the State gets out of terrorism — to the
point of promoting and controlling
terrorist groups, as the Italian govern-
ment did during the 'years of lead' in
the 1970s, on an 'eternal threat, eter-
nal loyalty' principle 4 — but how do
the terrorists benefit? Of course,
being portrayed as monsters totally
beyond social norms enhances the
appeal and power of some, those that
believe their revolution really will
smash social norms, appealing to oth-
ers thinking likewise and enhancing
the symbolic intimidation of those
that do not (the 'multiplier effect' dis-
cussed above).
However, there is more to it than this.
As Douglas argues at great length,
what is taboo is sacred as well as pol-
luting. Those challenging the order of
the universe define themselves not
just as dirt, but also as godlike.
Guerillas are often criticised for
elitism precisely because their actions
are seen as requiring a revolutionary
courage, clear-sightedness and dedi-
cation that is beyond the majority to
emulate, that is effectively superhu-
man.
Similarly, in death — and such activi-
ty surely invites death and torture,
which is an attempt to kill the revolu-
tionary 's spirit, what "a positive
effort to organise the environment"
means in this context — martyrs are
revered in a quasi-religious manner,
piously put 'above criticism' and
iconised as propaganda tools much as
were the saints of Medieval
Christianity, as intercessors with the
Divine (or the historic / material
forces as the Left would have it...).
To their great discredit, some gueril-
las actively promote such personality
cults precisely because they are eli-
tist, promoting their own power at the
expense of others' liberty.
WILD ORIGINS
Because definitions of terrorism are
so contested, so too is any prospect
of identifying the first terrorists.
Some say the 'White' royalists of
Brittany opposing the French revo-
lution, though this looks like a con-
ventional national liberation struggle
to me. Some would say the
Assassins that wrecked dynastic
havoc during the Middle Ages, but
the Zealots preceded them by a mil-
lennia and were the same, only less
ambitious. No doubt some would
say the first ape to ambush another
along the trail was a 'terrorist'.
Again, this pedantry does not inter-
est me. What does is the origin of the
chaotic, violent stereotype of terror-
ism, with all its symbolic force.
Who, then, was 'outside society' as
the stereotypical taboo-busting ter-
rorists now are? The answer, given in
Aristotle's Politics, was "the
Barbarians" or to contextualise it
with the full quote: 5
Humanity is divided unto two:
the masters and the slaves; or, if
one prefers it, the Greeks and the
Barbarians, those who have the
right to command; and those
who were born to obey.
Yes, the question of who was outside
social norms was an important one in
ancient Greek society because it
determined who could make slaves
and who could be made slaves.
Implicitly also, it defined who could
make laws, or else slaves would just
make laws freeing themselves.
Despite abundant evidence of other
civilisations abounding in the ancient
world — not least Egypt or the rival
Persian empire — the great
Philosopher so revered by Mediaeval
scholarship preferred logic to com-
mon sense and went on to argue that
non-Greek societies had no laws
(rather than that Greek law somehow
overrode theirs) and that non-Greeks
therefore lived in a state of Nature
like animals, and that enslaving them
was therefore probably even sort of
doing them a favour introducing them
to Greek civilisation.... This patently
absurd, self-serving argument would
be vastly elaborated as 'White man's
burden' in centuries to come.
Inspired by Aristotle and no doubt
bored by their own, overcontrolled
society, the Mediaevals fantasised
about the pagan state of Nature,
imagining wild, bearded Green men
in the woods bedecked with leaves
and antlers, living life without
restraint much like the Greek
Dionysus or Roman Pan. Whether
this was a folk remembrance of the
Neolithic (itself not wholly an oasis
of human freedom thanks to religious
and work impositions) or idealisation
of the lives of greenwood outlaws,
such ideas pervaded Medieval socie-
ty to such an extent that representa-
tions of Green men survive as ironic /
talismanic church gargoyles, rural
pub signs, springtime village
Springtime customs and even in liter-
ature, as in Gawain and the Green
Knight.
The late-Mediaeval Sir John
Mandeville — who is neck and neck
with Heroditus as 'father of lies', his-
tory-wise — portrayed these wild men
as "eat[ing] both flesh and fish all
raw", alongside all those on nonexist-
ent, distant islands with faces in their
chests and feet big enough to function
as sunshades.
Amusing fantasy perhaps, even a sign
of yearned-for natural freedom, but in
practice such stereotypes were
applied exactly as the Greeks did. On
arrival on the Carib island he named
Hispaniola in 1492, Columbus was
quick to insist Mandeville 's fantasies
were reality, reporting back to distant
Spain: 6
Men with one eye, and others
with dog's noses, who ate men,
and that when they took a man,
they cut off his head and drank
his blood and castrated him.
PAGE 11 GREEN ANARCHIST N0.70
www.greenanarchist.org
MODERN PRIMITIVES
Clearly, these Caribs were beyond the
law and hardly human. In the
enslavement of the Gaunches on the
Canary Islands that had been going
on simultaneous to Columbus's
colonisation of the New World,
Isabella of Castille had already had
Aristotle's apologia for slavery
rewritten, substituting the word
'Spanish' for 'Greek' in de Coroba's
infamous 1460 primer, Garden of
Noble Maidens. 1 Because of the
vagaries of Christian — as opposed to
Greek — religiosity, Isabella went one
step further than Aristotle in arguing
not that "A slave is a property with a
soul", but that they were essentially
soulless, like animals, and therefore
their labour could not be lost to the
Church through manumission by con-
version. Consequently, millions of
Caribs perished mining in
Columbus's silver mines in less than
a decade, best illustrating who was
'savage' and who best benefited from
"the law of nations".
This is a key point; as US retaliation
for 'terrorism' is orders of magnitude
greater than the initial terrorist act or
even what they're capable of, so the
'wild' or 'savage' is recast as a pro-
jection of the Civiliser's own unre-
strained violence, their true savagery
alibied. In his mythopaeic Against
History, Against Leviathan, Fredy
Perlman points to the transformation
of wilderness from being simply a
place of Nature outside human con-
trol to a place of subjective terror, of
potential ambush, due to the intro-
duction of Civilised warfare and its
unreasoning fears to it: 8
The world outside Ur is not the
wilderness our word will desig-
nate. Their wilderness clearly is
not the forest or desert, the
plants or animals, since the
nature-loving temple residents
have all these brought into the
city.
Could it be that their wilderness
is the wilderness created by the
Lugal [war leader] and his men;
the battlefields surrounding all of
Sumer's towns, the settings of
raids and counter-raids, the
scenes of torture, slaughter and
capture.
If the wild was not itself 'savage', it
might be a desirable alternative to
Civilisation — indeed, to the survival-
ist Right, its supposed Darwinian
savagery is precisely why it is desir-
able — and in any case, this paranoid
perception where the Civilisers' vio-
lence is attributed to what they desig-
nate non-Civilised as it is beyond
their control rationalises its destruc-
tion in the name of 'self defence'.
Forgive the stridency of the exam-
ple — though it is easier to see what is
typical when an example is falsely
presented as exceptional — but Nazi
imperialism and its inevitably atro-
cious consequences were charac-
terised by exactly such paranoid pro-
jection, which presented the German
people as surrounded by overwhelm-
ing numbers of communists and other
supposed untermenschen as well as a
nonexistent 'world conspiracy' of
Jews, with real genocide 'justified' as
a response to this projected, imagi-
nary threat.
To make this threat 'real', the Nazis
even faked incidents, burning the
Reichstag (the German parliament) in
1936 and then blaming their own
handiwork on 'red savagery', the bet-
ter to reinforce their own tyranny.
Though such reasoning verged on the
clinically insane, it perfectly suited
the aggressive ideolgy and expan-
sionist aims of a clinically insane
state, not that the Nazis have been the
only such state evident in modern
times....
UNVEILING THE MYTH
The language used to describe mod-
ern terrorists exactly matches that
used to describe the Medieval wild
men. John Pilger evokes the familiar
Washington media's stereotype of
"Flag-burning, embassy-storming,
bearded, wild men of Islam" 9 [my
emphasis] whilst Likud zealot
Benjamin Netanyahu referred to
hijackers as "wild beasts that prowl
our airways and waterways" 1 ° and as
GAL carried out their merciless cam-
paign of cross-border assassination of
Basque activists, the Madrid press
wrote most tellingly of: 11
The activists of ETA, who are
not men, who are beasts... No
human rights come into play
when a tiger must be hunted. The
tiger is searched after, is hound-
ed, is captured, and if necessary
is killed.
The ETA fighters assassinated were,
of course, human beings and not
tigers - the point is they were equated
with these animals symbolically, as
peculiarly savage creatures of the
wilderness, even though tigers, too,
rarely pose a real threat to humans
not encroaching on their own territo-
ry and are really the ones dispropor-
tionately threatened by such
encroachment.
Uncivilised humans, animals and
Nature itself are equated, united in
being seen as soulless and chaotic, fit
only to be ordered and controlled by
law-making humans for their own
benefit. This is the lesson of that other
great Christian garden myth, that of
God giving Adam mastery over
Nature in Eden. How much this
stereotype has been employed to
characterise terrorists as chaotic
forces of Nature in need of human
mastery is illustrated by Malcolm
Timbers' Jungian analysis of terror-
ism as infantile and unconscious: 12
By drawing on the works of Jung
and Nietzsche, I am attempting
to show that the terrorist is
influenced by an archetypal ele-
ment in Nature that is historical-
ly represented by the god
Dionysus in an extreme, distort-
ed sense, while, in this game, the
West represents an extreme and
distorted Apollonian element as
a civilization bent on dominating
and exploiting Nature... I per-
sonally knew a FLQ terrorist 13
who also talked a lot about ecol-
ogy and spoke of the Earth
unconsciously, in an infantile
manner, as a metaphor for the
mother's body. That is, mentally
he was in the Oedipal role of the
hero- son saving the Earth /
Mother from being ravished by
the evil Father / Capitalism.
It is a natural conclusion that if Man
(and they mean 'Man') can regulate
'soulless' Nature better than it can
itself after billions of years evolving
its own self-regulation, and if simple
societies stable for millennia are bet-
ter run by Civilisers than by their own
people (who, though mature adults
with social skills far in advance of the
Civilisers, are conveniently "like
children" in need of a patriarch), so
terrorists are prey to unconscious
destructive urges and too need to be
ruled or crushed.
There is no question of intrinsic value
here, that in all humility the Civilisers
might possibly be the ones that are in
the wrong. Like Freud, Jung believed
we had to suppress what is natural
and spontaneous, instinctual, in us in
order to cooperate and create 'shining
cities', higher consciousness and
higher Civilisation. In fact fantasies
of omnipotence and of being at the
centre of a universe made solely for
oneself is more typically associated
with infantile consciousness and
more exactly typifies the mentality of
the Civiliser, the conquerer, the engi-
neer, bending the whole world to
their own control.
If these arguments are starting to ring
bells with some readers, it's because
they are very familiar. Dan Quinn
concludes Ishmael by mythologically
noting: 14
The Takers' [Civilisers] story is,
'The gods made the world for
man, but they botched the job, so
we had to take matters into own
own, more competent hands.'
The Leavers' story is, 'The gods
made man for the world, the
same way they made salmon and
sparrows and rabbits for the
world; this seems to have
worked pretty well so far, so we
can take it easy and leave the
running of the world to the gods.
This, then, is the unveiling: the 'war
on terror' is a misnomer. The
Civilisers' true motive is to exert
absolute control over the entire
world, over what is wild in human
nature and beyond it — even at the
expense of their own laws. Terrorism
is selected only because it is a partic-
ularly distasteful manifestation of
natural resistance to their encroach-
ments, an obstacle to the further
accumulation of the monopoly of
violence on behalf of the State. The
'war on terror' is then actually a war
on freedom and a war on Nature
(including even human nature), an
attempt to eliminate everything not
under the control of a select few from
the world. Terrorists are not the
infantile, chaotic forces of Nature
anti-terrorists pretend — in fact, typi-
cally they are tainted by the same
authoritarian drives as those they
seek to 'liberate' the rest of us from
third-hand — but in the realm of the
symbolic, what is truly real has long
been eclipsed by its representation.
For the world-eating Civilisers, their
projections of free humanity are
monstrous, cannibalistic - but even
these are preferable to those, like
Terminators, that "can't be bought
off, can't be stopped, that just keep
coming".
In his Technological Society, ex-
French Resistance fighter Jacques
Ellul pointed out that for a security
state to work effectively, everyone
must be treated as a potential threat,
the better to identify and neutralise
actual threats. Unfortunately, the
machine logic of Efficiency means
any resistance to this, stemming from
a desire for autonomy, even privacy,
moves citizens into the 'threat' cate-
gory and tightens the security state's
intolerant definitions of 'terrorism'
still further.
As the supposed bearers of social dis-
order, today's terrorists are called
monsters. Tomorrow, inevitably, we
will all be called terrorists. To truly
live as free human beings, we are
given no option but to challenge this
man-made prison of a society and to
fight. In fighting, however, we must
never forget how to live, never allow
them to reduce us to the level of sym-
bolic cyphers.
NOTES
1 Joseba Zulaika and William A Douglass's
Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables and
Faces of Terrorism (Routledge, 1996),
p.6.
2 ibid., p. 5.
3 Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger: An
analysis of the concepts of pollution and
taboo (Routledge, 1966), p.2.
4 Gianfranco Sanguinetti's On Terrorism
and the State (Chronos, 1982), which
focuses particularly on the 'hoax' of the
Moro kidnapping, though this aspect of
Italian politics has always been a 'hall of
mirrors' strangely reminscent of Orwell's
highly realistic but satirical portrayal of
inter-war Trotskyism ('Emmanuel
Goldsteinism') in 1984.
5 Hugh Thomas's The Slave Trade: The
History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-
1870 (Picador, 1997), p.26.
6 Zulaika and Douglas, op cit., p. 154.
7 John Connor's 'Precedent for the New
World' in The Rise of the West: A Brief
Outline of the Last Thousand Years (Green
Anarchist Books, 2001), p.68.
8 Fredy Perlman 's Against His- story,
Against Leviathan: An Essay (Black &
Red, 1983), p.24.
9 John Pilger 's 'The World's worst
Terrorists are based in Washington',
www.users.bigpond.com/nlevine/worstter-
rorists, p. 3.
10 Zulaika and William, op cit., p. 157.
11 ibid, p. 157.
12 Malcolm Timbers' 'On the Apollo vs
Dionysian Conflict' in 'The Psychology of
Terrorism' series, Mysterium Journal of
Suffering and Death, www.geocities.com/
aquapontica/terrorism. I hasten to add that
this is quoted not because I in any way
endorse Jungianism — unlike Freud, Jung
felt no good reason to flee the Nazis, to put
it mildly — but rather because Timbers him-
self unconsciously discloses Civilisation's
own assumprions about terrorism.
13 The FLQ were the Quebec Liberation
Front, an early- 1970s clandestine Left-
nationalist group seeking seperation of
French speakers from Canada. Not given
to indiscriminate violence, they could
hardly be called 'terrorist' in terms of
strict definitions.
14 Daniel Quinn's Ishmael (Bantam, 1992),
p.241.
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COUNTERCULTURE?
www.greenanarchist.org
GREEN ANARCHIST No.70 PAGE 12
THE MALLEUS MAjjFICARUM - THE HAMMER OF WITCHES
A review of the hook by by Heinrich Kramer and Jacobus Sprenger as translated by Rev. Montague Summers
itch-hunt: an investigation of or campaign against dissenters
(as political opponents) conducted on the pretext of protecting
the public welfare.
Heretic: From the Greek, "able to choose", characterized by departure
from accepted beliefs or standards
It was the time when European men enslaved 11 to 15 million Africans
and caused 70 million deaths of Indians in the so-called New World.
The "Burning Times" here in Europe when millions of their own
inhabitants were tortured and killed, and the last vestiges of our wild
ancestry wiped out. A systematic persecution of all dissenters, political
opponents to the church/state and deviators from the civilised norm.
And Malleus Maleficarum was the Lorenzo de Medici and his daughter
book on every Judge's bench. The
handbook for every self-appointed
Inquisitor, every sanctimonius chris-
tian, every law-abiding citizen. An
inspirer of fear and distrust, rational-
ising the intrusion of christian
civilised society into every corner of
the earth.
The book is divided into three parts.
The first ponders such questions as:
"If it be in Accordance with the
Catholic Faith to maintain that in
Order to bring about some Effect of
Magic, the Devil must intimately co-
operate with the Witch, or whether
one without the other, that is to say,
the Devil without the Witch, or con-
versely, could produce such an
effect." (That's just a sample so you
can see how turgid these men were)
The second describes all the virile
member/bestial transformations kind
of stuff and the third relates to the
judicial proceedings in both the
ecclesiastical and civil courts. This
covers the way the arrest, imprison-
ment, torture and sentencing should
be carried out. One section deals
specifically with "the Trial with red-
hot irons"
Everything by the book, by the letter
of the law.
It doesn't mention the sexual assault
and rape carried out regularly by
prison guards and interrogators, but
you know that wouldn't have both-
ered Frs. Kramer and Sprenger any-
way. Their anti-women stance is
extreme even by the church's stan-
dards and they have the usual
civilised obsession with sex.
To conclude: All witchcraft
comes from carnal lust, which is
in women insatiable. See
Proverbs 30: There are three
things that are never satisfied,
yea, a fourth thing which says
not, It is enough; that is, the
mouth of the womb. Wherefore
for the sake of fulfilling their
lusts they consort even with dev-
ils.
The accused witch must be "often
and frequently exposed to torture. If
after being fittingly tortured she
refuses to confess the truth, he [the
inquisitor] should have other engines
of torture brought before her, and tell
her that she will have to endure these
if she does not confess. If then she is
not induced by terror to confess, the
torture must be continued." If she
remained obdurate, "she is not to be
altogether released, but must be sent
to the squalor of prison for a year, and
be tortured, and be examined very
often, especially on the more Holy
Days."
All perfectly reasonable.
The edition reviewed here has Pope
'Innocent' VIII's Papal Bull endors-
ing it. Pope Innocent VIII had two
kids — his son married a daughter of
married Gherardo Uso de Mare, a
very wealthy Genoese merchant who
was also Papal Treasurer. He feared
anarchy like every wealthy business-
man does and was obviously very
concious of the ways to influence
and brainwash people. To get them
afraid and docile, more manageable
to the Holy Empire, he and his
cronies manufactured the witch-
craze so they could subdue rebel-
lions, destroy dissent and snatch as
much land as they could. (All witch-
es had their property confiscated by
the church, none was ■
ever given back)
Published in 1486,
there were 13 edi-
tions by 1520, 16
more by 1669 and
translations into
German, French,
Italian, and English.
One of the most
widely read books
along with the Bible,
it was pushed with all
the ignorant fervour
you now get with the
"War on Terror", post
9-11.
Then, as now, there
were many people
unwilling to give up
their ways and land.
Many heretical
movements sprung
up, especially in
German- speaking
areas where the witch
hunts were particu-
larly concentrated.
And there were fami-
lies and individuals
who were happy with
their pagan ways, or
non-religious ways,
and didn't buckle
easily to the christian
plunderers. The
church resorted to
increasingly violent measures to whip
these heretics back in line.
The Inquisition itself was estab-
lished by Pope Gregory IX in 1233
to eliminate the Cathars 1 and other
threats to church power. This mainly
meant persecuting heretics labelled
the "Free Spirit Movement", a con-
venient banner for a highly diverse
flourishing of animist or mystic
thought.
One member of the Free Spirit move-
ment was interviewed by German
mystic Heinrich Suso in 1330:
Whence have you come? I come
from nowhere. Tell me what are
you? I am not. What do you
wish? I do not wish. Tell me
what is your name? I am called
Nameless Wildness. Where does
your insight lead? Into untram-
melled freedom.
In the early thirteenth century, David
of Dinant taught that "God and
Matter and Mind are one substance."
and Amalric of Bena held that "God
was the formal principle of all things,
and that every single person was as
much God as was Christ." The works
of both men were condemned as
heretical and burned. A group of four-
teen clerics, which included
Amalric 's secretary, rubbished the
notion of sin and began to preach "all
things are One, because whatever is,
is God." In 1210 they were burned at
the stake. 2
Things were beginning to intensify
by the 13th and 14th centuries and the
church compiled lists to be used as
handbooks in the persecution of dis-
senters which included the following
"errors" of heretics:
A man unified with God could
rob from others, could lie or per-
jure himself without sin, and, if a
servant, could give away the
property of his master without
license. More than that, the per-
fect could eat in secret as much
and whatever they wished and
could avoid work. ... There is no
need for any mediation on the
part of the clergy or any need to
seek counsel from learned men."
and "he could exceed the tradi-
tional bounds of charity and
arrive at a state beyondgood and
evil."
The lists of course have the usual sex-
ual stuff with most heresies encour-
aging "the satisfaction of the desires
of the flesh in every way" 3
The Ad Nostrum (another list) men-
tions more 'errors' propounded by
heretics: "He need not honor his par-
ents nor work with his hands, and he
can receive alms, even if not in
orders, or indeed steal, since all prop-
erty is held in common." They also
preached that man should follow his
own interior instincts rather than the
Gospels and those free in spirit can
do whatever they wish with their bod-
ies without sin. A perfect woman
need not obey her husband and all
should be released from servitude
including those who had been previ-
ously bound to a king or other lord.
These animist anarchist ideas were
the leftovers from our wild past. They
continued to be spread and lived
throughout Europe and many people
were prepared to die rather than sur-
render to civilised christian morality.
It is wise to remember that when the
word "God" is used, the heretics and
witches do not mean it in the same
sense as christians and other religious
do. Although the American Indians
had no concept of "God" their ideas
of the Life-force or animating spirit
were labelled "God" by modern
anthropologists. Even by calling it
Life-force I am not doing justice to
the idea animists have of Life.
It is worth bearing this difficulty in
mind when reading heretical texts or
christian versions of them. "God" is
an easily under-
stood and general-
ly accepted way to
talk about the Life-
Force, but the
heretical idea of
"God" and the reli-
gious one of it are
utterly different.
Most of the stuff I
found on the web
about heretics and
witches is written
by academics who
don't have any
idea what animism
is about and the
accounts we have
of heretical
thought or witch-
craft come from
hostile church
sources, especially
Inquisitorial
records. So we
have to read a lot
between the lines
to figure out what
might have been
going on.
"Grant to nature
all that it desires
without remorse of
conscience."
Marguerite
Porete4
"Nothing is sin
except what is thought of as sin." -
Johann Hartmann
"Whatever the eye sees and covets,
let the hand grasp it. " - John of
Briinn
The only thing we can be certain of is
that there was a huge diversity in
heretical thought. While there are
obvious similarities between groups
and individuals, there was no set doc-
trine, no fixed dogmas - only beliefs
as individual and varied as you can
imagine. 5
According to a Franciscan chronicler,
when three heretics were arrested and
interrogated in Constance in 1339.
"They confessed to more than thirty
errors so vile that they made their
audience sick.... One was that there
was as much divinity or divine good-
ness in a louse as in man or any other
creature, another that communion
bread should be served to pigs. They
also supposedly maintained that if a
man and a woman had sexual inter-
course on an altar at the same time as
the consecration of the host both acts
would have the same worth. 6
Another group called the Adamites
wanted to live as Adam and Eve did
before the Fall into civilisation.
According to John of Viktring,
men and women of various
classes assembled at midnight in
an underground hideaway which
they named a temple. There
Walter, 'a priest of the devil,'
said mass and delivered a ser-
mon. Then the assembly put out
the lights, chose partners, and
feasted, danced, and fornicated.
This, they said, was the state of
paradise in which Adam and Eve
lived before the fall. 7
Then there was the more normal
beghards and beguines who believed
a lot of christian stuff, but
embarassed the church by actually
living as christ supposedly had done.
They abandoned all possessions,
wandering around the country
preaching about the corruption and
wealth of the church. Individuals var-
ied in how revolutionary their teach-
ings were — some said that the church
was a useless parasite that should be
disbanded, others were more
reformist and hoped the church
would just punish its corrupt clergy.
The degree to which other people
described as "Free Spirits" were rev-
olutionary or reformist is not clear.
The texts that have survived — very
few — were often watered down ver-
sions of what was preached by non-
literary heretics. It's impossible really
to know how many revolutionary
heretics were around in the Middle
Ages or to know how much of their
ideas that have survived have been
altered or diluted. Also, taking into
account only the standard "Free Spirit
Movement" texts would be like a per-
son in fifty years trying to analyse our
'movement' (such as it is!) by look-
ing only at Greenpeace press state-
ments.
Many of the Free Spirits were anar-
chic revolutionaries, advocating a life
free of church/state interference. And
then again many were christian
and/or very wishy-washy — like mod-
ern hippies — watering down their
work to try to escape the noose or
stake. But the church burnt them all
anyway, not allowing any deviation
from their civilised codes.
These 'enemies of the church' were
usually called heretics before Malleus
Maleficarum and witches afterwards. 8
For propaganda purposes it was per-
haps easier to generate fear and sus-
picion of witches - because of their
'supernatural' powers they can kill
cattle, shrivel up your willy, etc. The
Malleus Maleficarum makes it clear
that witches regularly destroy proper-
ty, sicken livestock and generally
behave maelevolently towards the
community.
With the publicattion of Malleus the
witch-hunts intensified and some
reckon up to four million were killed,
though the true number will never be
known. The death rate was highest in
German- speaking places, and their
immediate neighbors, especially
Poland. Witch hunts were frequent in
Scotland and England, but there were
almost none in Ireland. (They didn't
PAGE 13 GREEN ANARCHIST N0.70
www.greenanarchist.org
COUNTERCULTURE
need an excuse there — the English
just killed everyone who disagreed
with them.) They were not wide-
spread in Russia and rare in Iceland
and Portugal, and while there were
many investigations in Italy and
Spain, few were executed. Although
the witch hunts were at their height in
Europe in the Middle Ages there were
other notable campaigns of persecu-
tion against witches. For example, in
367 a crusade was launched in the
East with many magicians, 'sooth-
sayers' ('truth tellers') and others
killed. Every major religion preached
against witchcraft — even Manichism
had Ten commandments, one of
which forbade the practice of magic.
Civilised people have always feared
witches and magick as it can unleash
unpredictable energies and has an
anarchic, un-lawful nature. In early
Constantinople a man named Sopater
was executed for "binding the winds
by magic" causing the cargo-bearing
ships to crash. We will never know to
what extent many of the later witches
and heretics were causing trouble,
sabotaging property, etc. If we never
hear of the acts of the ELF in the
national media now, then how would
be know of acts carried out hundreds
of years ago by uncompliant individ-
uals and groups?
With the obliteration of witches went
knowledge of our herbs and healing
methods — handy for the christian
doctors then anxious to gain money
and power. Birthing, abortion, infan-
ticide and contraception were other
skills either made illegal or appropri-
ated by institutional professionalism.
Women especially found any power
they had as village midwife and heal-
er taken off them. 9 Traditional com-
munity bonds disintegrated and in
Sweden, for example, in 1664,
church ordinances increased the
penalty for certain offenses from
fines to corporal or even capital pun-
ishment. These "crimes" included
premarital sex, communal feasts and
processions, public singing and danc-
ing, may poles, and wedding proces-
sions — long-held customary tradi-
tions.
The distrust and suspicion generated
by the witch-hunts severely eroded
traditional ways of life. People were
afraid to talk to anyone who might
turn out to be a witch, as under torture
many were made to inform on friends
and neighbours. Civilised people,
always herdish animals, became even
more domesticated — paranoid, isolat-
ed individuals, living in fear of the
courts and clergy. The world they cre-
ated was one of fear and isolation,
where anyone outside the norm was
shunned. It was a form of selective
breeding as the trouble-makers,
thinkers and healers were bred out
and the conformist collaborators pop-
ulated Europe.
Diabolus means slander or enmity.
Hence Satan is 'the slanderer', 'the
enemy'. Now they call them "terror-
ists" — the forest peoples still left on
earth who fight to keep their forest
home, the earth liberation front fight-
ing to slow down the destruction in
their home, the individuals fighting
many battles to hold onto some of
their freedom.
It reaches ever more ridiculous pro-
portions, as they tighten their grip
over all life. They, like their
Inquisitor fathers, can't afford to
leave any people live as an example
contrary to their doctrine. And of
course they want the land — the tim-
ber, oil, gas.... They dress it up in
press releases as 'terrorism' to justify
their plunder and murder, and with
the mention of "terrorists" think
they've a license to do anything to
protect their interests, just like years
ago they mentioned "witches" 10
Washington- AP — The head of
the international police agency
Interpol wants a worldwide
crackdown on music and soft-
ware piracy. He says the illicit
proceeds are helping fund terror-
ist networks, including al-Qaida
and Hezbollah. Interpol
Secretary-General Ronald Noble
is calling for stepped-up efforts
to trace the proceeds of pirated
CD's, DVD's, computer soft-
ware, and counterfeit clothing
and cigarettes.
The language of hypocrites and liars.
Pretending their money-making
exploits are matters of national secu-
rity. Pretending their plunder of oil
and timber is for the good of 'unde-
veloped' thirdworlders. Their war
against Life, all life, goes on. Their
propaganda attempting to excuse it
gets ever more elaborate.
Just as the majority of people kept
their heads down and pointed the
finger and hid behind rational excus-
es, listening to the screams of their
neighbours, watching the flames lick
their freedoms to ashes, so now the
majority go along with the persecu-
tion of forest people, anarchists, and
other heretics. They allow themselves
to be hypnotised by television, cine-
ma, newspapers, radio, billboards...
as the propaganda machine reaches
into every home, every mind.
And they fear the non-normal reali-
ties. They believe in devils and evil
and all that rubbish. They shun the
shadow worlds and paranormal
ways. 11 They subdue their own wild
natures and train themselves to see
only their solid, measurable, mun-
dane reality, persecuting anyone who
doesn't agree with their civilisation
dogma. They live lives completely
devoid of freedom, of intuition of
Life, of forest ways. Disconnected
from all the rythms of nature, alienat-
ed from their true wild selves, sepa-
rate from all other life-forms.
Religion perverted our animist expe-
riences into rigid codes and strict
laws. Spontaneous experiences of the
wonder of Life became book-bound
commandments. Wild outdoor gath-
erings became litanys in stone
churches. Sexual pleasures were
dulled to marriage.
Magick became a childish triviality —
like Harry Potter and Sabrina the
Witch, sanitising witchcraft beyond
recognition. The idea of magick
being a technique to focus on non-
normal realities is completely absent
in most modern people. The witch
hunts largely succeeded in their sys-
tematic attempt to wipe out any
knowledge of that which is beyond
words. That which we know intu-
itively. 12
Civilisation has always been afraid of
those who 'know' ('Witch' comes
from wit: 'to know'), those who seek
the truth behind propaganda lies,
those who know all imposed rules are
bullshit, designed to rob us of our
freedom.
They said "Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live", but we do live on. In
every digger trashed, every lab burnt
down, every single act of defiance; in
every experience of 'that which is
beyond words', every sensing of
Life's mystery and power, every
blow struck against the chains of
civilisation,
We live. We live.
Footnotes:
1 The Cathars didn't acknowledge the sacra-
ments, the doctrines of hell or purgatory, or
the resurrection of the body and developed
their own church and ritual, rejecting the
authority of the Church. They had lives of
simplicity and penance in which salvation
lay only in the Lord. Thousands were killed
and many more tortured into accepting
orthodox faith and by 1244 they had been
crushed.
2 "The Brethren of the Free Spirit - divine
amorality".by Paul Harrison
http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/fringe_sci-
ence/freesprt.html
3 Those are from Nordlinger and Albert
Magnus lists. "The decree of Vienne also
listed eight errors of 'an abominable sect
of malignant men known as beghards and
faithless women known as beguines in the
Kingdom of Germany' which are generally
considered to be the essence of the Free-
Spirit heresy. The first tenet was the cen-
tral one. This stated that man can attain
such a degree of perfection in lis earthly
life that he is incapable of sin. In this state
he can achieve no additional grace because
such would give him a perfection superior
to Christ. The second point followed that
such a man need not fast or pray because
in his state of perfection sensuality is so
subordinated to reason that he can accord
freely to his body all that pleases him.
Similarly the third point was that such a
man is not subject to human obedience or
to any laws of the Church because 'where
the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty' (2
Corin. 3:17)
- from "The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the
Later Middle Ages", Robert E. Lerner,
University of California Press, Berkeley,
1972,. (extracts on web at:
http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Pre
prints/book/consum/gnos/lerner.htm#anchor
189274)
4 Around the end of the 13th century
Marguerite Porete wrote "The Mirror of
Simple Souls" which was condemned and
burned by the Bishop of Cambrai. She
refused to be shut up and eventually was
arrested and tortured. Refusing to answer
any Inquisitors questions even after a year
in prison, the authourities eventually exe-
cuted her by using extracts from her book
as evidence. She was burned along with a
converted Jew who "relapsed" and spat in
hatred on an image of the Virgin.
5 In 1307 at Aix-en-Othe the Bishop accused
a man of having said that normal baked
bread was as good as bread consecrated
on the altar and that it was better to con-
fess to a tree trunk than to a priest. How
many individuals were accused on this
kind of basis? How many we never hear
about?
6 The report finishes. . . "Finally, though this
was not an error so much as an anecdote,
when one of the heretics was asked by three
women to teach them about the Trinity, he
had them take off all of their clothes and lie
on their backs. Then, after binding each by
the leg to the other, he violated them all
sexually "in the most scandalous manner,"
and, "casting his lecherous eye on their
exposed shame," he said "here is the Holy
Trinity." Afterwards he had intercourse with
each of them separately." (from "The
Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later
Middle Ages" - see note 3).
7 Ibid.
8 In 1486 a Papal Bull to the Bishop of
Brescia and Inquistior of Lombardy,
"emphasises the close connection, nay, the
identity of witchcraft with heresy."
(Introduction to the Malleus by Rev.
Montague Summers) Summers holds that
"In fact heresy was one huge revolutionary
body, exploiting its forces through a hun-
dred different channels and having as its
object chaos and corruption. The question
may be asked - What ws their ultimate aim
in wishing to destroy civilisation? What did
they hope to gain by it?"
9 Although in places like Finland, Russia and
Estonia more men than women were killed,
overall about 85% of those killed were
women. Women can be naturally more intu-
itive, more in touch with
Life/Power/Whatever you want to call it.
Don Juan described women as having a
direct relationship with the Nagual, whereas
men had to work on it a bit more and many
initiation rites in primitive tribes are con-
cerned with trying to get the boys to open
up. In a lot of places the girls are assumed
to just know this stuff instinctively. I'm not
suggesting that women here in civilisation
have this gift - it's obvious that they don't -
but in a culture where intuitive forms of
knowledge are prized, women do seem to
have a natural ability to tune into energies
around them. Maybe by the time of the
witch-hunts more men had lost this ability,
while women were still a little 'tuned in'
and therefore a much bigger threat to civili-
sation.
10 It's interesting to see how this is repeated
throughout history. Tacitus records
"Therefore to scotch the rumour that the fire
had taken place by his own order Nero sub-
stituted as culprits and punished with the
utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of
men loathed for their vices, whom the
crowd styled Christians."
11 Paranormal means 'beyond normal'. It's
worlds away from the christian idea of
'supernatural' 'above nature'. Nothing can
be above nature, nothing can be outside of
Life. Paranormal also has some definitions
as "beyond the range of scientifically
known or recognizable phenomena". That is
more what I mean than anything 'outside of
nature' - a ludicrous idea.
12 Old English wigle: 'divination', wiglian:
'to divine'. Divine: to perceive, make out,
or discover intuitively or through keenness
of insight. (All in the Webster-Merriam
dictionary, as are all definitions mentioned)
This animist way of knowing is in com-
plete contrast with civilised habits of pri-
oritising reason above intuition. "Let a
man obey the law of his intellect rather
than that of nature..." the Malleus warns,
yet no knowledge can come purely from
the intellect.
LIFESTYLE
WILD SWIMMING
Of course, swimming in natural set-
tings is our common human her-
itage — and perhaps our origin — but
now, inspired by Resurgence contrib-
utor and Schumacher College lectur-
er Roger Deakin's 1990 Waterlog
(ISBN: 0099282550), a rising tide of
Nature-lovers are taking to UK's
ponds, rivers and lakes. Describing
wild swimming's appeal, Deakin
writes:
When you swim, you feel your
body for what it mostly is: water.
To swim is to experience how it
was before you were born. Once
in the water, you are immersed
in an intensely private world as
you were in the womb. The
swimmer experiences the terror
and bliss of being born.
So swimming is a rite of passage, a
crossing of boundaries; the line of the
shore, the bank of the river, the edge
of the pool, the surface itself. You are
in nature, part and parcel of it, in a far
more complete and intense way than
on dry land and your sense of the
present is overwhelming.
Most of us live in a world where
more and more places and things are
sign-posted, labelled and officially
'interpreted', turning the reality of
things into virtual reality. It is the rea-
son why walking, cycling and swim-
ming will always be subversive activ-
ities. They allow us to regain a sense
of what is old and wild in these
islands by getting off the beaten track
and breaking free of the official ver-
sions of things.
Needless to say, officialdom is not
happy about all this unprofitable,
uncontrolled sensual pleasure — never
mind "regaining]... what is old and
wild" — and is doing its hopeless best
to regulate or ban it.
Absurdly arguing they'll be liable for
the actions of wild swimmers who
sneak over their fences on their own
initiative, Buckinghamshire County
Council have banned all unauthorised
swimming on their property. Others
have settled for the lesser measure if
posting 'no swimming' signs at every
particularly beloved watering places,
a precaution heartily mocked by the
Digger's annual 'most anal sign'
award ('Digger' here being a pun,
naming both members of the archae-
ological labourers union and the com-
mutarian followers of Gerard
Winstanley centuries before).
Thus, their website carries pics of
signs sternly warning against "deep
water" ("so good for diving in") with
"submerged rocks" beneath it ("too
deep to cause harm"). Another warns
of the dangers of rat-borne Weils dis-
ease ("as not recognised by the
European Water Quality directive")
because, of course, unmediated con-
tact with Nature is contaminating and
'dirty' as far as these body-hating,
desk-bound bureaucrats are con-
cerned. The Digger even posts trans-
lated 'no swimming' signs encoun-
tered whilst holidaying in the "social-
ist republic" of Vietnam, a lesson in
itself.
Knowing the natural world enough
to interact with it on its own terms is
part of the appeal of wild swimming,
but wise, practical tips are included
on the Digger site too: check for
depth, current, temperature and
glass. Watch out for potentially elec-
trocuting exposed cables nearby
and— a bigger risk on these densely-
populated islands— your clothes in
case some prankster runs off with
them!
Mercifully no-one is playing out their
perverse organisational obsessions by
establishing some chartered, rule-
bound 'Wild Swimming Association'
(witness the Ramblers for a depress-
ing dry-land contrast). It's just people
going out alone or with mates 'doing
what comes naturally' and if at a
banned spot, well, they can't watch
us all and such defiance makes any
prohibiting law or regulation a dead
letter anyway...
NEWZINES "
MANUFACTURING DISSENT -
PRISON WRITINGS OF
ANARCHIST ROB LOS RICOS.
Regular readers should be familiar
with Rob's writing already. He has
been contributing to Green Anarchist
as well as other anarchist zines, such
as 'Anarchy — A Journal of Desire
Armed' for some time. This is Rob's
third zine since his incarceration
some three years ago and in my view
the best (the first two were 'Rob the
Rich' and 'Fuck You Bearden') .
The production quality and layout
of 'Manufacturing Dissent' is great
but more importantly it reads really
well. Illustrated throughout are a
whole host of articles by Rob that
put together here in one collection
read like they flow together well.
There is some information on Rob's
life-history in the introduction,
some backround to the June 18th
1999 riot in Eugene that led to
Rob's subsequent imprisonment,
articles on illegalism, chaos, direct
action and even Rob Los Ricos Vs
Chumbawamba.
It's definitely worth going out and
getting this whether you've read
Rob's other zines or not as there is a
lot of new stuff in here.
VEG@NARSI. PRICE FROM
VEGANARSI@MAIL.COM.
Veg@narsi is a green anarchist zine
from Turkey. It apparently includes
green anarchist, primitivist and vega-
narchist articles and has had four
issues since the project was started in
2000.
However I don't understand Turkish
so you will have to be satisfied with
the description of this zine as a fairly
chunky cut and paste job jam packed
full of graphics and articles.
The author translates a lot of stuff
from english language anti-civiliza-
tion websites and distributes them
through this zine. it certainly seems
like a project worth supporting and
maybe someone out there can even
translate the odd article from turkish?
Get in touch at the email address
above.
Many more reviews in next issue...!
G.A. THE ZINE
www.greenanarchist.org
GREEN ANARCHIST No.70 PAGE 14
GREEN ANARCHIST SAYS
AN OPEN FORUM
At this years Earth First! Gathering, at a well-attended meeting of ana-
cho-primitvists from across Europe — including the hosts of this May's
anti-civilisation conferance in Barcelona — GA was enthusuastically
welcomed as an open AP forum.
Of course we welcome such an initiative, though GA has served as a
forum for free discussion of AP and direct action for the best part of a
decade, initially sharing this responsibility with the Anarcho-
Primitivist Network's Missing Link (founded by John Moore and
Leigh Starcross out of Ian Bone's 1994 Anarchy In the UK festival)
and certainly not seeking to be some sort of exclusive voice now.
at others are typically also those most
afraid of the plain truth about them-
As the last three issues' editorials
have shown, we are commited to free
speech in a way those carrying such
claims on their mastheads are not.
Too many movement publications are
commited to free speech for them-
selves — even demanding it of other
publications more principled than
themselves — but will refuse a word's
space to their critics, even in response
to blatant defamations.
In our experience,those keenest to
shout "censor", "liar" or "sectarian"
selves seeing print. Some even ele-
vate this refusal to debate with those
they can't refute into a political strat-
egy, hoping readers aren't well-read
enough to know the full picture and
find such glaring omissions laughable
indictments in themselves.
More insiduous are those who are-
maintaining that printing contrary
opinions is 'divisive' or 'unrepresen-
tative of the movement' — as they
see it, of course — which means that
only what is unchanging and unchal-
lenging ever sees light of day, the
very opposite of revolutionary
dialectic.
Such arguments are often used in the
most absurdly self-serving way — one
north American eco-action journal so
keen not to 'upset the apple cart' that
they regularly rejected 'unrepresenta-
tive' contributions (including a near-
world exclusive) in favour of those
from a banal local contributor who
happened to generously give them
access to her swimming pool!
If there are 'divisions' in a move-
ment, there is usually good reason
for them, of otherwise unacknowl-
edged power inequalities. If opinions
are deemed 'unrepresentative', then
'ware those claiming they 'represent'
the movement! What is so irre-
proachably attractive about cultivat-
ing illusions of 'unity' at such costs
anyway - except to wannabe politi-
cians? As revolutionaries seeking to
transcend all mediation, we should at
least deal with realities, not their
mis/representation.
Our view is that we aren't wiser than
the movement Green Anarchist is
situated in, certainly not wise
enough to decide what should and
shouldn't be said, even if it appears
inarticulate or stupid to us as indi-
viduals.
We're just here to provide space for it
to speak for itself in all its diversity
and for readers to decide for them-
selves who is inarticulate, stupid or
just plain wrong and contribute their
own responses in turn.
We are not Leninists, believing we
can somehow nurture free thought
and a free society under the heavy
hand of 'provisional' / 'transitional'
censorship, even if — the most typical
but patronising rationalisation from
such types — this makes for the best
propaganda.
Green Anarchist 71 's deadline is
around April 2004. We're very keen
to open Green Anarchist out beyond
the usual circle of editors and regular
contributors, so it'd be good to get a
meeting together before then to dis-
cuss future input to the mag, as well
as mutual cooperation on ideas, proj-
ects and action. In addition to the
paper, Green Anarchist now has a
much-expanded website and on-line
discussion forum for easier reader
access and rapid reaction to events
between issues and we'll shortly be
launching our own newsgroup. Be in
touch now!
TWO DECADES OF DISORDER
Come 2004, Green Anarchist will
have been publishing for twenty
years. It's certainly come a long way
since the eclectic Greenzine that
came out of Easter '84's Stop the City
demo and subsequent Poison Girls'
benefit.
We'll be celebrating this with a retro-
spective next issue, Green Anarchist
71, and we're inviting reminiscences
from early contributors now. Hear
from you soon!
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NEXT ISSUE:
THE VOYEUR SOCIETY
It seems that we live in an ever more
voyeuristic society. Surveillance is
encroaching more and more on many
parts of our daily lives. From chips in
Gillette razors to chips in the clothes
you buy.
From 'reality' TV shows to the wide
array of webcam websites.
Everything from piss-cams to inter-
nal-cams! It appears that pretty soon
every part of modern life will be
either on camera, on a database or on
record somewhere.
People seem unhappy just getting
on with their daily existence, they
need to be seen to be living. So
instead of people getting on with
living they're own lives in pursuit of
their desires, they sit at home
watching other people on television
through big brother style pro-
grammes getting on with theirs.
Mostly, it seems, in the hope that
someone will get naked or people
will fall out and have a fight More
and more people seem happy to settle
for a simulation of a life with real
experiences, happy with a mediated
world of virtuality. It's not just a sim-
ple case of state surveillance Big
Brother style, but a case of 'self-sur-
veillance'.
An increasingly alienated world of
mirages engulfs us. From ID cards
through RFID chip technology, store
loyalty cards and GPS tracking sys-
tems to mindlessly banal 'reality' TV
shows, webcams and CCTV. We
want your articles on the rise of this
voyeur society
■ re-pressed distribution
145 Cardigan Road ,
leeds,
ls6 llj, UK.
www.re-pressed.org.uk/
repressed@mail.com
■ http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/
- Online green Anarchy Archive
■ www.primitivism.com/
■ www.animalliberation.net/
■ Ecotopia -
www.sindominio.net/ecotopia/
Spanish eco anarchist page.
■ Coalition Against Civilization P.O.
Box 835,
Greensburg, PA 15601
United States
■ www.blackandgreen.org/
• Anarchy - a journal of desire
armed,
C.A.L. Press
PO Box 1446
Columbia, MO
65205-1446
www.anarchymag.org/
• Untamed Distribution,
Box 1 8,Greenleaf Bookshop,
82 Colston Street,
Bristol,
UK,
BS1 5BB
www.untameddistribution.org/
• II Silvestre
(Terra Salvaggia)
Via del cuore 1
56100 PISA, Italia
GREEN ANARCHY NOW
WHO ARE WE?
The State spent £10m jailing
GA's editors in an attempt to
shut us up. We're still here...
WHY SMASH CIVILISATION?
Civilisation is the exploitation of
mass society. Specialisation, divi-
sion of labour creates hierarchies
to maintain the complex web of
production and consumption that
is our techno-industrial mass
society.
Exploitation divides mass socie-
ty and the individual on the
grounds of class, gender, ethnici-
ty and sexual preference. Mass
society can't be reformed. It must
be replaced.
DISINTEGRATION IS BEAUTIFUL
In small communities each person
is respected as an autonomous
individual. Self-determination
replaces hierarchy and so the city
ends. Mass can't fight mass. The
Left's living proof.
LAND OR DEATH
All life derives from the land
.Civilisation alienates us from
the Earth using nationhood and
property law. We must take back
the land and living self- suffi-
ciently, re-establishing our rela-
tionship with the Earth. Those of
us who are most exploited by
Civilisation live in the South,
the Third World, the fruits of our
labour are exported to the rich
North.
We have nothing to lose in fight-
ing for self-governing, self-suf-
ficient small communities. Both
North and South we need to
expand our culture of resistance
to free ourselves from alienation
from our Earth..
DIRECT ACTION
Build an alternative green and
black eco-nomy and enjoy your-
selves in the smashing of banks,
multinationals, military bases,
labs, exploiters, bigots and
developers. Organise under-
ground in networks of
autonomous small groups.
Green Anarchist,
BCM 1715,
London
WC1N3XX, UK
info @ greenanarchist.org
PAGE 15 GREEN ANARCHIST N0.70
www.greenanarchist.org
UTTERS
LETTER FROM THE U'WA PEOPLE CURRENTLY
UNDER OCCUPATION RY THE COLUMBIAN STATE
U'wa Communique
The U'wa people are tired of the pro-
liferation of false promises that the
Colombian government has made to
us. We, the U'wa, are the guardians
of this, our ancestral territory of thou-
sands of years, and each day, the gov-
ernment and corporations are violat-
ing our sacred territory.
According to the State, indigenous
people are the minority, but we, the
U'wa, say that we are only a minor-
ity in the white society; in reality, we
are the majority, because we know
and live with Nature. Because of
this, the father and mother of the
sky, and all of the spirits of nature,
care for and protect our struggle to
defend the natural world, even if it
means that we lay down our own
lives.
It is for this reason that the U'wa
have one Law only, unchanging and
inviolable; the Law that was given to
us by the creator, which is unwritten
and yet woven into our cultural prac-
tices: to protect Nature, to love her,
to care for her, and to use her gifts
well. But the government follows
other laws, and the laws that they
have made are changeable and
breakable, so that frequently they
will do away with those laws they do
not favor. This is why Colombia is a
country wherein so many laws fail;
laws are violated, and written by a
minority for everyone to follow,
while the Law of the U'wa passes
from one generation to the next,
unaltered.
As the government has invented its
Law, they therefore say that the rich-
es of the ground and beneath the
ground belong to the State; and now,
we ask, "Who made the Earth and its
riches, the water, the plants, moun-
tains, the sun, the moon, the stars?
Who made man himself? Where are
the tools that they use to destroy
nature taken from? This is to say,
where do men get the materials that
they use to age the world and bring
destruction to it? Moreover, we want
them to demonstrate for us that their
laws and codes are capable of creat-
ing anything like the earth that we
live in; if they cannot, then they have
no claim to ownership of the Earth
and its riches.
This is why we require that the
Government and the industries
respect the sacred ancestral territory.
And not only should they give respect
to our ancestral grounds and to those
titles given to the U'wa under colo-
nialism, they should see that the
U'wa also constitute a State, with our
own laws and codes to manage and
protect nature.
We will continue defending our
ancestral territory, though we have
already been victims of kidnapping,
torture and death. We have lost a boy
and three indigenous rights advocates
from North America (Ingrid
Washinawatok, Lahena'e Gay, and
Terence Freitas) who came to support
the U'wa cause. How long will it be
until we are left in peace? Or will
they drive to extinction the entire
U'wa people, so that they can take all
of the resources in our sacred ances-
tral territory?
If the company takes all of the
resources of our Mother Earth, where
are they going to get the materials
they need to exploit the riches of the
ground and the substrate? What will
happen? And where are we going to
live? Under the earth, in the air, in
the sky? When nature and the creator
of this world and those forces
beyond it send their punishment for
the disrespect of the natural world,
their punishment will not be commu-
nicated to anyone; no one will know
the day and hour of the destruction of
the Earth.
If the government and the company
think that money is God, as well as
progress and development, then the
god of money will save their lives
while the U'wa will die in the defense
of nature; therefore, the U'wa will
not go to toil for industry. We are
born to die or to live, and no single
human being may save himself, or
defy the rule of God, or of Nature.
Perhaps if the company and the gov-
ernment have faith in their Money
God, and if he really exists, he will
save them, making another world for
them to destroy; if he does not, they
will all die.
Historically, the territory of
Indigenous Peoples was ample, limit-
less; we were free to go to any part of
the indigenous territory in the
Americas, from North America to
Chile, and beyond. We did this with-
out private interest; we traveled to
exchange gifts, and to learn each
other's customs.
But when the Spanish invaders
arrived, they changed all of this, and
now we live on tiny, limited parcels
of land. Currently, they are trying to
put an end to our culture through their
invasions: through the Church, indus-
try, and the government, as well as
those who compete to strip our sacred
territory in order to get petroleum and
the other resources above and
beneath the ground.
We the U'wa demand that the gov-
ernment, oil companies, colonists,
and armed groups respect our sacred
territory, and that white society's
abuse of our daughters, mothers, and
wives is halted- we want no more of
the Mestiziation which is the result of
the Spanish invasion and the rape of
our women.
We ask you whites: are you not your-
selves descended from indigenous
ancestors? You are. Therefore help us
to protect our culture and cease the
abuse of this planet, which is home to
us all. Before the arrival of the
Spanish, white people did not exist
on this continent; oceans separated
this from the white world. Thanks to
the Spanish, there are now white peo-
ple here, and thanks to those indige-
nous people you coupled with, there
are Mestizos who you now refuse to
recognize.
Why won't you leave our Ancestral
Territory and the lands that you occu-
py — which is property of indigenous
peoples — in PEACE? The whites
who do not understand us abuse
indigenous women more and more
each day. Therefore we demand that
the government punish whites that
abuse indigenous people. This is why
the government makes laws, and if
this law isn't complied with, what
good are laws?
We want ECOPETROL to leave our
territory, since its presence is a form
of the violation of our culture. Oil is
not development. Instead, it brings
war, hunger, poverty, death and
destruction. The government says
that oil brings "progress and devel-
opment", but we the U'wa do not
want our territory to become anoth-
er IRAQ, and we know that oil
brings progress only to a few rich
and established capitalists. We don't
know where the money derived
from our resources goes. It only
benefits a few individuals and fami-
lies.
If you do not listen to us, if you
regard us only with rage, or hatred, or
grudging, we the U'wa are prepared
to lay down our lives when the day of
invasion comes. We will die defend-
ing our territory when you send your
troops to kill all of the U'was,
because we are tired of receiving,
from the companies and the govern-
ment, so many threats to destroy our
territory, its resources, and our cul-
ture.
We the U'wa have faith in God, faith
in our Mother Earth, faith in the
Gods of Nature, faith in the spirits of
Nature, and thus we know that they
will revenge the destruction of this
world. We know which is the owner
of this world, between you or God.
And if the Earth really is the State's,
then they should control the furies of
Nature, because for God, nothing is
impossible.
If an U'wa disagrees with cultural
principles, he is not U'wa, he isn't
anything.
—THE INDIGENOUS U'WA PEO-
PLE
"Cultures with principles have no
price "
ROYALLY SHAFTED
Dear Sir,
I am writing to you because I believe
that the Animal Rights Movement
has been unjustly blamed for a very
public crime staged by others. I am
referring to a device taped on to a
butcher's shop window (Taylers) in
Moray Way, Rise Park, Romford
back in February of this year. There is
also an issue of the persecution of a
long-term local environmentalist.
I have phoned the anti-terrorist
branch on four ocassions and been
told every time that "animal activists
are responsible" however we are
now in September and there have
been no arrests, no charges and
nobody held for questioning.
Howevr, the association with animal
rghts activists has remained —
encouraging the smearing of any
green campaign in the area as "terror-
ism" to a political aiudience
whipped-up about crime by Andrew
Rosindell MR
I had distributed leaflets in Rise Park,
before the device, advertising myself
as a local journalist. I had also ben
accepted as the Green Party candi-
date in a council by-election for the
ward of Rainham and Ennington.
Around the same time, the build-up
to a royal visit to Romford was taking
place. About two weeks afer I had
distributed leaflets the device was
taped on the butcher's window. It was
well known by local tories that I was
both involved in Green politics and
campaigns. It is my suspicion that the
heightened security around the royal
visit was used by Andrew Rosindell
MP to try and smear the Green move-
ment by an association with terror-
ism. Rise Park is a tory area and they
don't want green campaigners setting
themselves up as local journalists and
trying to reduce their majoriy - hence,
I believe, the bomb.
Also, the manager of the Romford
Oxfam shop and long-term animal
rights campaigner Tony Edwards
was sacked after a complaint was
made about him. I worked part-time
in the Oxfam shop myself for a cou-
ple of years. Tony Edwards was the
managr for over twelvs years and
refused to take a salary to help
Oxfam' s aims even further. Tony
Edwards is a pacifist, a vegan and a
committed environmentalist.
However, somebody had him
expelled from his position. At no
time before Andrew Rosindell
became an MP had Tony Edwards
come under attack in any way. At no
time before Andrew Rosindell
became an MP had a bomb been
planted in my local butcher's shop —
and all within the space of a few
months — designed to coincide with
the first ever official visit by the
Queen to Romford. Andrew
Rosindell MP is an ardent royalist
who has ben accused many times of
having links with extreme right-wing
terrorist groups.
For your general infomation, the
device was reported to police on
27th February 2003, and was given
the reference number CAS 143 9.
The crime report number is
5403726/03.
Yous faithfully,
David Peacock, Director, Gooseberry
Pie, Romford.
TATTOOS
hi!
sorry to disturb you. I am a green
anarchist I want to find a tatto models
about green- anarchy, anarchy, ani-
mal-earth liberation, primitivism and
vegetarianism that I can make I am
searching tatto models, if you know a
site can you direct me towards that
site...
and I am searching the graphichs of
hammer and monkey wrenchs.
please help me....
fourteeny ears @ hotmail.com
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NEWS
GREEN ANARCHIST No.70 Page 16
ORIGINAL AND
BAYER DOWN BUT NOT OUT MEET THE
A key GM crop developer, Bayer, has
decided to halt UK trials of genetically
modified plants. The move is seen as a
major blow to the industry. Bayer was the
last company carrying out GM trials in the
UK, though it said yesterday it hoped to
start up again soon when conditions were
'more favourable'.
Until last week, Bayer CropScience,
Bayer's crop subsidiary, believed it was
close to a deal that would allow GM crop
test sites — which are regularly destroyed by
protesters — to be kept secret. The Advisory
Committee on Releases to the Environment
had said this was 'acceptable in terms of
risk assessment', as one might expect of
industry stooges, but at the last minute the
Department of Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs told Bayer it would not sup-
port this change in regulations.
Most GM crop trials carried out over the
past few years have been sabotaged, not
only those of Bayer. Other
companies have pulled
out. Now Bayer, the last to
continue with them, has
decided to call it a day.
The current 'brain drain'
of greedy british agricul-
tural scientists to the US
and Canada is now likely
to intensify. Good rid-
dance too.
Although this is good
news, it doesn't mean that
5 Bayer have pulled out of
GM completely, just that
they're not going to do
any more trials in the UK
this season — they can still
potentially produce the 9
seeds that are due to be
commercially grown.
However, it shows they're
on the retreat already and
with continued pressure
After many years of night-time crop trashings, and they -n abandon their plans
hundreds of arrests and raids, with the withdrawal of for GM in the UK alto "
Bayer all the companies doing trials of Genetically § ether -
Engineered crops in the UK have pulled out. www.stopbayergm.org/
NEW BOSS...
The African National Congress govern-
ment is using colonial-era principles to jus-
tify refusing to hand back a lucrative South
African diamond mine to the tribes who
originally lived on the land.
In a case with huge constitutional and
financial implications, the Nama communi-
ty has accused the government of being as
racist as the whites who created apartheid.
The Nama once lived at Alexander Bay, on
South Africa's north-western coast, but
were evicted from the land after diamonds
were discovered there in 1925. Since then
the mine has produced millions of carats,
and the tribe is demanding compensation
which could run in to billions of pounds, as
well as the return of their land.
But lawyers representing the ANC in court
cited an old, colonial-era principle, claim-
ing that the Nama were so "uncivilised"
that they could not enjoy any land rights.
Citing the British principle of terra nullius,
empty land, the lawyers argued that even
though the Nama lived in the area they
were so backward that they did not warrant
ownership rights.
ANC backers said the party remained com-
mitted to land restitution but the case of the
Nama people must be opposed because it
threatened to "open the floodgates" for
countless frivolous claims.
Yet another outcome of yet another point-
less nationalist struggle, supported and
misrepresented here to us by lefties.
SMALL PACKET
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ANARCHIST
for lie destruction of Civilisation
ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY ISSOE. LIGHTS 00T IN NEW YORK. THE
PERENNIAL WILD MEN. RETRAYAL ON BOUGAINVILLE. DIRECT ACTION
DIARY. PRISONER SOPPORT. COMBAT DISPATCH. DOD BLACK S APES OF
WRATH. HAMMER OF WITCHES.
PIES FLYING EVERYWHERE
Our esteemed leaders are getting hot (and
cold) under the collar as the anarchist
Biotic Baking Brigade steps up its cam-
paign of ridicule and disrespect.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 28: U.S.
Ambassador Peter Allgeier, co-president of
the FTAA, was pied during a press confer-
ence by Bakers Without Borders (pics
above). The press release didn't say what
the FTAA is but its sounds the same as the
WTO so fair play to 'em! These people are
so boring it probably stands for free trade
agreement of amerika.
Los Angeles, California, August 12:
Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader
got a pie in the face at an event with one of
the people running for California governor.
At the end of a news conference, a man ran
into the room, shoved a pie in Nader's face,
and ran out. Nader threw some of the pie at
the unidentified man as he took off — but
the police didn't catch him.
Alberta, Canada, July 9: Monday morn-
ing, in Calgary, Alberta's premier was busy
flipping flapjacks and beef sausages
(because he can't sell them to his friends in
the USA anymore) when a team of dedicat-
ed pie-throwers delivered him the long
awaited dessert that he deserved: a succu-
lent banana-cream pie.
Ralph would not permit that in his
province, even though the rest of Canada's
governments will stop harassing gay citi-
zens and let them marry.
Is it surprising to see Ralph Klein opposing
the Kyoto Accord for the right of big cor-
porations to pollute, the same corporations
that finance his campaigns? Talk about
democracy in action! He even threatened to
separate from Canada for his friends' right
to pollute.
And there's still a bolshevik party! The
campaign to clean up electioneering by
Russia's top electoral official, Alexander
Veshnyakov, has got off to a bad start. As
he closed a five-day conference involving
27 political parties in Moscow, the mud-
slinging, or rather the mayonnaise- sling-
ing, began. A radical activist from the
National Bolshevik Party squirted a packet
of salad dressing at the Electoral
Commission's chief. Veshnyako, his suit
splattered with mayonnaise, retorted by
calling the young activists "Scumbags".
Taking part in the closing ceremony of the
Elections-2003 forum were the Communist
leader Gennady Zyuganov, the LDPR
leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and secretary
of the general council of United Russia
among others
The Biotic Baking Brigade coming
soon to a pie-o-region near you.
Look for "Let Slip the Pies of War: The
BBB Cookbook," to be published by AK
Press <akpress.org > in early 2004.
PLEASE NOTE: the BBB has a new email
address and website. . .
bbb @bioticbakingbrigade.org bioticbak-
ingbrigade.org
Friends of the BBB: c/o POB 40130, San
Francisco, CA 94140, Amerika